- Twelfth Letter (Plato)
The "Twelfth Letter of Plato", also known as "Epistle XII" or "Letter XII", is an
epistle that tradition has ascribed toPlato , though it is almost certainly aliterary forgery . Of all the "Epistles", it is the only one that is followed by an explicit denial of itsauthenticity in the manuscripts. In theStephanus pagination , it spans 359c–e of Vol. III.Like the "Ninth Letter", the "Twelfth Letter" is purportedly addressed to
Archytas . It thanks him for sendingPlato some treatises, which it then goes on to praise effusively, declaring its author worthy of his ancestors and including in their number Myrians, colonists fromTroy during the reign ofLaomedon . It then promises to send to Archytas some of Plato's unfinished treatises.Diogenes Laertius preserves this letter in his "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers ", as well as a letter from Archytas which presumably occasioned the "Twelfth Letter"; [Diogenes Laertius , "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers ", Life of Archytus, iv] This letter points to the treatises having been those ofOcellos of Lucania , aPythagorean . Because the writings which are attributed to Ocellos are forgeries from the First Century BCE, the "Twelfth Letter" is probably also a forgery, and by the same forger, intended to stamp the treatises with Plato's authority. [Bury, Epistle XII, 607.] There is no other mention of a Trojan colony inItaly from the reign of Laomedon, let alone ofLucania or the Lucani having been decended from the otherwise unknown "Myrians." [Bury, Epistle XII, 608.] R. G. Bury also notes that the "Twelfth Letter", along with the "Ninth", spellArchytas with an α, whereas Plato spells it in more authoritative epistles with an η (Αρχύτης). [Bury, Epistle XII, 607; cf. "Seventh Letter" 338c, 339b, 339d, 350a, "Thirteenth Letter" 360c.]ee also
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Epistles (Plato)
*Plato
*Dialogues of Plato Footnotes
References
*Bury, R. G., ed. (1942) "Timaeus, Critias, Cleitophon, Menexenus, Epistles".
Loeb Classical Library . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
*Diogenes Laertius . "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers ".
*Plato . "Seventh Letter".
*Plato . "Thirteenth Letter".
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