Letter Three
“Plato to Dionysius: Rejoice!”1—if I sent such a letter, would I correctly
315b hit upon the best salutation? Or rather by writing, in accordance with my customary usage, “Do well!” as I have habitually greeted my friends in the letters? For you indeed addressed even the god in Delphi, as they who then went to see [the oracle]2 reported, by wheedling him with this very same phrase: you wrote, as they say, “Rejoice and preserve a tyrant’s
315c life of having pleasure!” I, on the other hand, would not, in a call to a human being—let alone3 to a god—encourage anyone to do this: to a god, because I would be commanding against nature, for the divine lies far away from pleasure and pain; to a human being, because pleasure and pain engender much harm, the pair of them begetting badness at learning, forgetfulness, imprudence, and hubris in the soul. And let these things have been said in such a way by me about the mode of address; but you, in reading them, take them in whatever way you wish to take them.
Not a few are claiming that you were saying to some of those who came
315d to you as ambassadors that, when I once heard you saying that you were going to colonize the Greek cities in Sicily4 and to unburden the Syracusans by replacing the rule of tyranny with kingship, I then prevented you, as you claim, though you were intently eager to do these things; and that now I would teach Dion to do these very things, and that we,
315e by means of your own intentions,5 are taking your rule away from you. Whether you are deriving some benefit because of these speeches, you yourself know,6 but you do injustice to me by saying the opposite of the things that happened.7 For I was slandered enough by Philistides8 and many others to the mercenaries and among the majority of Syracusans on account of my staying in the acropolis, and as for those outside, if there was any error, they made everything turn on me, asserting that you
316a obeyed me in all things. But you yourself know most clearly that I was voluntarily engaging in a few of the political things in common with you at the beginning, when I supposed I could do something more; I was taking seriously, in a measured way, some other, minor things and the preludes to the laws,9 separate from the things which you or someone else wrote in addition; for I hear that some of you were later revising them, though it will be clear which [parts are which] to those capable of discerning my style.10 But therefore, as I just said, I have no further need of slander, either among the Syracusans or any others you persuade by
316b saying these things; rather, I am in need much more of a defense speech11 against both the slander that occurred before and that which is now naturally growing greater and more vehement after it. For these two, it is necessary for me to make the defense speeches double: first, that I appropriately avoided sharing in common with you in the affairs of the city, and second, that you have not spoken [truthfully] of my counsel, nor of my prevention, in saying that I had come to be standing in your way when you were going to recolonize the Greek cities.
316c Hear first, then, the beginning, concerning the things I spoke about first. I came to Syracuse, having been called by both you and Dion. He had undergone my inspection, having long ago become a guest-friend,12 and was in the midst of his prime and middle-aged, which things are altogether needed13 by those possessing even a little intelligence14 who are going to deliberate concerning things so great as yours then were. You, on the other hand, were very young, there was great inexperience around
316d you of the things in which one needed to have become experienced, and you were very unknown to me. After this, either a human being, or a god, or some fortune together with you cast Dion out, and you were left alone. So do you suppose that I then had a partnership with you in political things, when the sensible partner had been destroyed, and I saw the senseless15 one left behind with many and wicked human beings, not ruling but supposing he ruled, and being ruled by, such human beings? In these circumstances, what ought I to have done? Wasn’t it the very
316e thing I did by necessity: to bid farewell to the political things for the remainder of the time and to beware of the slanders of the envious; and as regards you [pl] altogether, though you [pl] had come to be split from one another and were at odds, to attempt to make you [pl] friends with each other as much as possible? Of these things even you are a witness: that I never gave up straining for this very thing, and, though with dif
317a ficulty, it was nevertheless agreed by both of us that I would sail home, since war had taken hold of you [pl], but that when peace should again come to be, both Dion and I would come to Syracuse, and that you would call us.
This is how these things came to be concerning my first voyage to Syracuse and my safe16 return back home. As for the second: when peace had come to be, you did not call me in accordance with the agreements but sent a letter telling me to come alone and claimed that you would send for Dion in his turn. Because of these things I did not go, though
317b I then incurred even Dion’s hatred, for he supposed that it was better for me to go and to hearken to you. One year after these things, a trireme arrived with letters from you. At the beginning of the things written in the letters was that, if I should come, all Dion’s affairs would come to be to my liking,17 but if I should not come, the opposite. I am ashamed to say how many letters then came from you, and from others because
317c of you, from Italy and Sicily, and to how many of my intimates and acquaintances, all directing me to go and begging me to obey you in every way. It seemed to everyone, beginning with Dion, that I needed to sail and not become soft. But I was making a point of my age to them, and, concerning you, I was asseverating that you would not be able to withstand those slandering us and wishing us to come to enmity—for I both saw then and see now, with respect to the great and extravagant property18 of private men and monarchs, that in general, the greater it
317d is, the more numerous and greater are the slanderers and indulgers in shamefully harmful pleasure whom it nourishes; riches and the power of the rest of excessive property19 engender no greater evil.
Nevertheless, having bid farewell to all these things,20 I went, having resolved21 that there was need that no one of my friends ever accuse me on the grounds that, because of my faintness of heart, all that was
317e his, though it might not have been lost, was utterly destroyed.22 Having got there—for you yourself know everything that happened thereafter—I was of course requesting, in accordance with the agreement of the letters, that you first reconcile23 with Dion and recall him. I was pointing the way to reconciliation,24 which, had you then obeyed me, would perhaps have been better than the things that have now come to pass for you, and for the Syracusans, and for the other Greeks, as my opinion divines. And then, I was requesting that Dion’s relatives25 have his [prop
318a erty], and that it not be apportioned by those apportioning it among themselves—you yourself know who. In addition to these things, I supposed that, once I had come to be there, you needed to be sending what you had been in the habit of providing him each year and more besides, not less. Hitting upon none of these things, I requested to leave. After these things, you were trying to persuade me to remain for the year, asserting that you would sell off all of Dion’s property, send half the
318b proceeds to Corinth, and leave the rest to his son. I could say many things that you promised but in no way did; I cut them short on account of their multitude. For indeed, having sold off all the property26 without persuading Dion (though you asserted you would not sell it without persuading him), you most impetuously added the pièce de résistance, you amazing one, to all your promises. For you found a contrivance neither noble, nor refined, nor just, nor advantageous: to frighten me, as though I was ignorant of the things then going on, in order that I should not
318c seek for the money to be sent back. For when you cast out Heraclides, seeming just neither to the Syracusans nor to me—wherefore, together with Theodotes and Eurybius, I begged you not to do these things—you, taking this as a sufficient pretext, said that even long ago it was clear to you that I thought nothing of you,27 but rather of Dion and Dion’s friends and intimates, and since now Theodotes and Heraclides were
318d being slandered, who were intimates of Dion, I was employing every contrivance so that they should not pay the just penalty.28
And that’s how it is concerning the political things in the partnership between you and me. And if you observed any other estrangement of me from you, it is appropriate for you to suppose that all these things came to be in this way. And don’t be amazed, for I would justly appear bad, to a man with mind at least, if I were persuaded by the greatness of your rule to betray an old friend and guest-friend who was doing badly because
318e of you—someone in no way worse than you, if I may say so—and choose you, the doer of injustice, and do everything in whatever way you commanded, clearly for the sake of money; for nothing else would anyone claim was responsible for my change, if I had changed. But these things, having come to be in this way, produced my and your wolf-friendship29 and lack of partnership, because of you.
My speech, which is nearly continuous with the one from just now, has reached a speech concerning that about which I was saying that a
319a second defense must be made for me.30 Examine, then, and in every way turn your attention toward, whether I seem to you to be lying about anything and not to be speaking the truth. For I claim that, when Archedemus was present in the garden, as well as Aristocritus,31 nearly twenty days before my voyage homeward from Syracuse, you were blaming me for the very things you now speak of: that I cared for Heraclides and all the others rather than you. And you questioned me in front of them as to whether I remembered directing you, when I came at the
319b beginning, to recolonize the Greek cities. And I conceded that I did remember, and that it even still seemed to me that these things were best. But it must also be told, Dionysius, what was said after this at that time. For I asked you whether I had counseled you to do this very thing only or also something else in addition to this. And you answered me, very much enraged and hubristically, that you supposed—wherefore what then was your act of hubris has now become a waking reality rather
319c than a dream—you said, with very feigned laughter if I remember, “You directed me to do all these things once I had been educated, or else not to do them.” I said that you remembered most beautifully.
“So it’s once I had been educated,” you said, “to do geometry? Or what?” And I did not say what it occurred to me to say in response, fearing lest, for the sake of a little phrase, the prospect of my sailing away, which I was anticipating, should narrow after having been wide open.
But I have said all this for the sake of the following things: don’t slander me by saying that I didn’t allow you to colonize the Greek cities
319d wiped out by barbarians or to relieve the Syracusans by replacing the tyranny with a kingship. For no falsehoods you could ever speak of me befit me less than these. And I would give speeches of refutation in addition to these and still clearer than them, if an adequate trial were to manifest itself somewhere, to the effect that I directed you to do things, but you weren’t willing to do them. And indeed, it is not hard to say clearly that
319e these would have been the best things to do—for you, and for the Syracusans, and for all Siceliotes.32
But, sir, if you, having said these things, claim not to have said them, I have my just penalty.33 But if you agree, then after this, holding Stesichorus to be wise and imitating his palinode, replace the lie with the true speech.34
1. “Rejoice” here translates chairein, the most common word of greeting in ancient Greek. It is so common a greeting that it is often translated simply “hail,” but the literal meaning related to joy and gladness is important in what follows. Cf. Charmides 164d6–e5. Elsewhere in the Letters, the same verb is mainly used not as a greeting but as the valediction that I have translated “farewell”; it is also rendered “enjoy” twice in Letter Two (310e and 311a). Since Plato begins this letter with a question about how to address Dionysius, this is the only letter of the thirteen that lacks a salutation.
2. “They who went to see [the oracle]” translates the participle hoi theōrountes. The verb theōrein is most often used to mean “to observe” or “to contemplate,” whence the English “theory” and “theorize.” But Plato here employs the word in another sense—namely, “to be a theōros,” an envoy sent to consult an oracle, or “to be a spectator” at a religious festival. For the practice of submitting questions to the Delphic Oracle in writing via theōrountas, see Fontenrose 1978, 217. The only other use of this word in the Letters occurs at 350b7, where it refers to Dion “being a spectator” at the Olympic games.
3. Accepting mē hoti dē, the marginal correction found in the manuscripts instead of the difficult outi. Burnet’s further emendation to mēti dē seems unnecessary.
4. Referring to the Greek cities of Sicily as opposed to those inhabited by the Carthaginians. The inhabitants of the former had been conquered or expelled during Dionysius the Elder’s wars with Carthage in the late fifth century or subsequently displaced by Dionysius the Elder himself, and Dionysus the Younger evidently had ambitions of reclaiming and repopulating them with Greek colonists. See Harward 1932, 9–10; and cf. 319c7–d2, 331e2–32a3.
5. “Intentions” translates dianoēmasin; it is the first appearance of this or any related word in the Letters. While I have used “intention” and “intend” to translate words in this family wherever possible (indicating deviations from this practice in footnotes), there is another dimension of meaning that should be carefully considered, especially given the importance of this word in the Letters. The prefix and root of, for example, the abstract noun dianoia, suggest something that has been “thought through”; it comes to mean “intention,” then, rather, as in the English phrase “to have in mind.” That is, the word refers to a process of thought that has culminated in the conception of a plan and the resolution to execute it. However, especially in the philosophic writings of Plato’s era, it was at least as common for dianoia to have the more purely theoretical sense of a mental “understanding.” Hence, Plato uses the word dianoia to describe the “affection arising in the soul” in the soul’s grasp of “the mathematical things” in his “divided line” metaphor (Republic 511d). In the Letters, words in this family occur most of all in Letter Seven—a letter much to do with the relationship of theory and practice, of thought and action—though also here in Letter Three and elsewhere in Letters Eight and Eleven. These uses span the range of possible meanings, and one should always consider the alternative possible translation related to a theoretical “understanding” wherever a word related to “intention” appears in my translation.
6. “Know” here is gignōskeis, “recognize” or “understand,” as opposed to the word I have usually reserved for the English “to know” (eidenai).
7. Plato puts this accusation in the language of a legal charge.
8. It is generally accepted that this is Philistus, the Syracusan historian who wrote influential histories of Sicily (no longer extant) and who helped to establish the tyranny of Dionysius the Elder. Though he fell into that tyrant’s disfavor, it seems he came to be an important figure in the court of Dionysius the Younger and generally an opponent of Plato and Dion. See especially Plutarch’s Dion 11–14, 19, and 35–36, as well as Nepos, Dion 4. Philistus’s historical works are thought to have painted Plato in a negative light (Morrow 1962, 22) and may for all we know have begun to circulate in some form by the time Plato composed the Letters. The appellation “Philistides” in the text here has suggested to some the ignorance of a forger (Nails 2002, 240), but Harward notes that “the interchange between the patronymic and the simple name was common at Athens” (1932, 179n5), and Morrow that “proper names were often abbreviated in the manuscripts and hence variant readings could easily arise” (1962, 200n3).
9. For the Platonic notion of “preludes to the laws,” see Laws 722c6ff.
10. Or “to those capable of judging my character” (tois to emon ēthos dunamenois krinein). Ēthos can refer to traits of moral character (as in the titles of Aristotle’s Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics), and more generally to character traits or manners developed and sustained through habitual activity (see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1103a14–18). Thus the word can also mean “usage” or “custom”—or, as in the present passage, a habitual “style” of writing. I have tried to use “character” to translate ēthos wherever possible.
11. Here and in the next sentence, as well as at 318e7 below, the word for “defense speech” is apologia, the same word that is usually translated “apology” in the title of Plato’s Apology of Socrates. It can refer to any speech one might make in one’s own defense, but particularly to such speeches made in legal cases. Apart from these three places in Letter Three, I have reserved all forms of the word “defend” for translations of forms of the Greek word amunō (i.e., “defend against,” “ward off”).
12. The important Greek notion of xenia, roughly translated “guest-friendship” here and throughout, has no exact counterpart in modern Western culture. The unwritten rules of xenia entailed a pious obligation to extend favors of hospitality to travelers far from home, and a similar obligation upon the traveler readily to repay those favors if an occasion to do so should later arise. To have been hosted as a xenos, a “stranger” or “guest-friend” in a foreign city, therefore, was to have been hospitably received and to have incurred a debt of gratitude. Moreover, bonds of xenia might be established in other ways: two families could come to share such a relationship across generations, and a person or family could be granted a kind of diplomatic status within the framework of xenia by a city, regime, or ruler. The reciprocal obligations of guest-friendship were believed to fall under the jurisdiction of Zeus (hence the epithet Xenios; see 329b4), and transgressions could be punished by the Furies (see 357a4).
13. “Needed” translates the Greek word chreia. Generally, I have reserved words related to “need” for the translation of words related to the Greek dei, whereas the word chrē (related to chreia) is translated “ought.”
14. Lit. “those possessing a mind—even a small one.”
15. “Sensible” and “senseless” here translate emphrona and aphrona. The latter could well be translated “imprudent,” as it is equally the antonym of phronimon, the adjectival form of phronēsis, “prudence” or “practical wisdom” (see n. 7 to Letter Two). The prefix em- on the word emphrona here suggests something like “in one’s senses.”
16. Ordinarily, I reserve the word “safe” to translate words related to the Greek asphalēs, keeping these distinct from the noun sōtēria and the verb sōizein (“salvation” and “to save,” respectively). Here, however, the word sōtēria is used to mean something like “safe arrival.” There is a parallel case in Letter Seven, where the verb esōthēn means something like “arrived safely” (338e5).
17. “To my liking” translates the common Greek idiom kata noun ton emon, literally “according to my mind.”
18. Lit. “substance.” The Greek ousia has both the mundane meaning intended here, which refers to wealth in the form of property and financial assets (as in “a man of substance”), and a highly abstract ontological meaning, which refers to the substance of a being in the sense of its essence, i.e., that which underlies its accidental qualities, or indeed to “being” as such. Ousia is used seven times in the Letters: here, just below at 318a6, and five times in Letter Seven. Only once is the philosophic meaning intended (“being” at 344b2). All other instances have been translated “property.” The related word exousia appears just below at 317d4, and is translated “excessive property.”
19. Or “the other [forms of] license” (hē tēs allēs exousias).
20. I.e., “having dismissed the preceding considerations.”
21. Or “intending.” The word is dianoētheis; see n. 5 above.
22. The words for “lost” (apolesthai) and “utterly destroyed” (diōleto) are closely related.
23. “Reconcile” translates oikeiōsamenon, the mending of a relationship between kinsmen or similarly close friends. I translate oikeiotēta in the following line “reconciliation” to indicate the etymological link, but that word refers more simply to the relationship itself, not to its restoration. Most important, one should note the connection between these words and oikeios, an “intimate” or “relative,” which appears in the following line (as well as in the addresses of Letters Seven and Eight; see n. 1 to Letter Seven). A different cluster of words (katallagē/diallagē/diallaxis) is translated “reconciliation” in Letters Seven and Eight (350d6, e1, 356c7).
24. “Pointing [the way]” translates the word phrazōn, which I have usually rendered “explaining.”
25. Or “Dion’s intimates,” as I have usually translated oikeious.
26. The word for “property” here is not ousia as elsewhere but chrēmata, which I usually translate “money” or “wealth.”
27. The verb for “think” in this case is not related to noeō, the word usually rendered “think,” but rather phrontizō.
28. Heraclides was to become an important ally of Dion during the latter’s campaign against Syracuse, which eventually ousted Dionysius the Younger. In the turbulent time following that victory, a political rivalry developed between Dion and Heraclides—to which Plato alludes in Letter Four (320eff.)—which itself degenerated into military conflict. In the end, Dion’s reluctant acquiescence to the assassination of Heraclides appears to have precipitated his own assassination in turn. Our primary source for the details of Heraclides’s role in the history of Syracuse is Plutarch’s Dion (especially 32ff.); Harward’s (1932, 29–53) summary, tailored to a study of Plato’s Letters, is excellent and considers the relevant historiographical questions. Theodotes is said by Plutarch to have been Heraclides’s uncle (Dion 45); Eurybius appears to have been another companion of Heraclides. These two are otherwise unknown, but the incident involving them to which Plato refers here in Letter Three is presented again and in greater detail in Letter Seven (348b–349e).
29. Lukophilia, “wolf-friendship,” may be Plato’s coinage. See Harward 1932, 180n15.
30. The structure of this sentence in the Greek is unusually convoluted, even if the sense is tolerably clear. See Harward 1932, 180–81n16.
31. This Aristocritus is unknown outside of Plato’s Letters. It is presumably the same Aristocritus to whom Plato refers at 363d2. On Archedemus, see n. 1 to Letter Two.
32. Siceliotes were the Greek inhabitants of Sicily.
33. I.e., if Dionysius would claim victory in this imagined judicial contest simply by denying the truth of Plato’s defense, then Plato has his punishment already: the ill repute resulting from Dionysius’s slanders.
34. The legend of the poet Stesichorus told that he was blinded for maligning Helen of Troy but had his sight restored when he wrote his palinode, retracting his criticism. Palinōidia literally means a “recanting.” Plato’s Socrates famously follows the example of Stesichorus’s palinode in the Phaedrus (243a2ff.).