The Valve - A Literary Organ | Oh, so there are two Confusatrons! (Exactly!)

<< Poll: How to Write Literary Criticism | Front Page | A Sermon, on the Current Disputes Over Turning Off Cellphones in the British Library Reading Rooms; >>

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Oh, so there are two Confusatrons! (Exactly!)

Posted by John Holbo on 06/20/06 at 10:41 AM

So I’m writing up a set of undergrad-suitable notes on Plato’s Republic, Book I. I’m introducing the characters biographically, learning extra stuff along the way myself. So I got around to reading a speech by Lysias - the speech-writer whose work is discussed at the start of Phaedrus. Lysias is another son of Cephalus, brother to Polemarchus (those are the two guys we talk to before Thrasymachus bursts on the scene.) Lysias doesn’t get any lines in Republic. But practically all the information about the family turns out to come from a prosecution speech he delivered after the restoration of democracy, in which he denounces Eratosthenes - one of the Thirty Tyrants - for expropriating the family’s wealth and murdering Polemarchus. So I visit good ol’ Perseus and click on the speech that has Eratosthenes in the title, obviously the one. It starts out ok - seems a bit mild, actually: "I should be only too pleased, sirs, to have you so disposed towards me in judging this case as you would be to yourselves, if you found yourselves in my plight. For I am sure that, if you had the same feelings about others as about yourselves, not one of you but would be indignant at what has been done; you would all regard the penalties appointed for those who resort to such practices as too mild." But then I get to the part where Lysias says that he is here because Eratosthenes slept with his wife. Furthermore, he wants to make clear "that this was the one and only enmity between him and me."

I thought this was, like, some serious continuity problem in the Golden Age of Athens. One orator - two origins. Like Power Girl. (I only read Power Girl comics for the long articles.) Like maybe one of these speeches is set on Athens-2, where the Thirty Tyrants never even built any of those super robots to batter down the fortifications around Piraeus.

Turns out Lysias ghost-wrote a speech for some other guy when some other Eratosthenes slept with that guy’s wife. Oooooooh. The speech I wanted is here. Both speeches are extremely interesting. (I think ‘Eratosthenes’ means something like ‘to wound with errata’.)

For earlier Book I headscratching by me, see this CT post.

Name:
Email:
Location:
URL:

Valve Links

Current Authors

Past Authors

Most recent articles

Most recent comments

Search:

Archives

Syndication

Validation

Credits

Blogroll

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Oh, so there are two Confusatrons! (Exactly!)

Comments

Add a comment: