Twelfth Letter (Plato)

Twelfth Letter (Plato)

The "Twelfth Letter of Plato", also known as "Epistle XII" or "Letter XII", is an epistle that tradition has ascribed to Plato, though it is almost certainly a literary forgery. Of all the "Epistles", it is the only one that is followed by an explicit denial of its authenticity in the manuscripts. In the Stephanus pagination, it spans 359c–e of Vol. III.

Like the "Ninth Letter", the "Twelfth Letter" is purportedly addressed to Archytas. It thanks him for sending Plato some treatises, which it then goes on to praise effusively, declaring its author worthy of his ancestors and including in their number Myrians, colonists from Troy during the reign of Laomedon. 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 of Ocellos of Lucania, a Pythagorean. 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 in Italy from the reign of Laomedon, let alone of Lucania 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", spell Archytas 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

*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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