Spuria (Pseudo-Platonic Works)

Author: Pseudo-Plato (spurious — agreed not by Plato) · Year: c. 4th–1st c. BCE · Type: other (survey of nine works in the Spuria appendix)

The Spuria appendix of the Cooper/Hutchinson Complete Works gathers nine pieces transmitted under Plato's name but agreed not to be by Plato: the Definitions (411a–416), On Justice (372a–375d), On Virtue (376a–379d), Demodocus (380a–386c), Sisyphus (387b–391d), Halcyon (§§1–8), Eryxias (392a–406), Axiochus (364a–372a), and the Epigrams (1–18). They are Old-Academy and Hellenistic imitations, doxography, and dubiously-ascribed verse — most datable to the latter fourth century, some to the third-century sceptical Academy, two (Halcyon, Axiochus) to the Hellenistic-to-early-imperial showpiece tradition. Read as philosophy they are derivative and dramatically inert; their unifying value is corpus-level reception: they preserve the Academy's method-after-Plato — what Socratic–Platonic dialectic looked like once it became curriculum and doxography. collection-and-division freezes into a lexicon (Definitions); the elenctic "what is X?" search becomes a schematic genre (On Justice, On Virtue, Sisyphus, Eryxias); the Socratic knowledge-condition becomes a dissolving dilemma (Demodocus, Sisyphus); and consolation is assembled as a treasury of mutually-incompatible school-arguments (Axiochus). They repeatedly cite genuine Plato as an external authority — the surest sign that they are reception, not composition.

Core Arguments

Each work is surveyed below: its argument, the genuine dialogue it echoes or imitates, and its reception value. None is original philosophy; all are pseudo-Platonic.

Definitions (Horoi) — 411a–416

A reference lexicon of ~185 terms, each given as genus + differentia ("horos, definition: something said, comprised of genus and differentia," 414d), the first collection sorted into the Academy's three branches (physics 411a–c, ethics 411d–414a, logic/language 414a–e), most terms receiving several stacked formulae. Echoes: collection-and-division of the Sophist/Statesman/Phaedrus — the sophist entry (415c, "paid hunter of rich and distinguished young men") is copied verbatim from Sophist 231d. Reception value: the corpus's strongest specimen of diairesis sedimented — the method's products stored apart from the live cutting that yields them; Diogenes' plucked chicken ("Here's Plato's man!") and the comic "pumpkin" satire target exactly this schoolroom residue.

On Justice — 372a–375d

A bald elenctic dialogue: speech (the judge) is what decides just from unjust ("speech, as it seems, decides what's just and unjust," 373d), and the just person is just "because of his knowledge" (375c), so the unjust are unjust unwillingly, through ignorance (Epicharmus: "No one is willingly wicked," 374a). Naming the deciding instrument still does not say what justice is; the dialogue ends in confessed aporia. Echoes: the elenctic "what is X?" search; the situational-ethics move recalls Republic 331b–d, the involuntary-injustice point the Laws (860c–e). Reception value: elenchus-as-genre at its most schematic (the editor calls the form "unusually bald and unattractive") — evidence of how the Academy ritualized the refutative form.

On Virtue — 376a–379d

By disjunctive elimination — virtue is not teachable (the great men, Themistocles to Pericles, failed to teach it to their own sons) and not natural (there is no recognizer-skill for it, as horsemanship judges horses and assayers judge coins) — virtue must come by divine allotment, theia moira ("virtue … comes by divine allotment to those who possess it," 379d). Echoes: recapitulates the Meno (377b–378c ≈ Meno 93d–94e; theia moira ≈ Meno 99e–100b), flattening the genuine dialogue's nuance into a flat positive thesis. Reception value: shows the Academy mining genuine Plato as quotable authority — and the conclusion was contested in-house (Xenocrates wrote Virtue Can Be Transmitted; the Stoics grounded virtue in nature).

Demodocus — 380a–386c

Two pieces. (I) Collective deliberation is incoherent: it is "ridiculous to meet to discuss matters on which it is impossible to give good advice" (380b), yet if good advice is possible one knower suffices, so the wish to hear several advisers betrays that you trust none of them. (II–IV) Three common-sense maxims — hear both sides before judging, blame the borrower's failure not the lender's refusal, trust kin over strangers — are each argued down to leave the reader suspended. Echoes: the knowledge-dilemma of socratic-intellectualism; the balancing of II–IV is the sceptical Academy's equipollence technique (Arcesilaus); the frame-character is borrowed from the genuine Theages. Reception value: a datable third-century sceptical-Academy exercise — dialectic repurposed as suspension-drill.

Sisyphus — 387b–391d

There can be no expertise of deliberation. One "tries to find out" only what one does not know, yet one cannot deliberate "about what he doesn't understand" (389c–d), so deliberation is neither inquiry; and deliberation aims at the future, which "has no nature," so one cannot "hit upon the nonexistent" any more than an archer can score with no target (391b). The aporia is left open, gesturing (per the editor) toward Goodness-itself as the missing target. Echoes: cites the Meno's paradox of inquiry ("nobody can ever try to find out anything that he knows," 389a ≈ Meno 80d–e) but not its recollection solution; cf. Euthydemus 275e–277c. Reception value: the Socratic knowledge-condition turned into a dissolving dilemma; pairs tightly with Demodocus I (the editor notes the overlap in content).

Halcyon — §§1–8

A short showpiece: the metamorphosis-myth (a grieving woman turned into a halcyon-bird) cannot be judged impossible, because human judgment of the possible and impossible is "unknowing, unreliable, and blind" (§6) against immeasurable divine power — a god who calms a storm or makes a bee from a grub could reshape a woman into a bird "very easily." Echoes: the myth-interpretation method of Phaedrus 258e–259d. Reception value: a Hellenistic-to-imperial "Asiatic"-style display piece (c. 150 BCE–50 CE), later reattributed to Lucian — which is why it dropped out of the Stephanus corpus (Étienne omitted it) and is cited by section, not Stephanus number.

Eryxias — 392a–406

The wise are the wealthiest, since wealth = possessing what is most valuable, and by serial substitution the most valuable possession turns out to be wisdom ("the same men are … the wisest … and the wealthiest," 394a). But money and property have only conventional, use-relative value — "everything that turns out to be useful to us is property" (400d), and the useful is useful only to the one who knows how to use it; cross-cultural currencies (Spartan iron, Carthaginian leather) are worthless abroad. So the wealthiest, having the most needs, would "appear … in the worst condition" (406). Echoes: the Socratic use > possession thesis of the Euthydemus and Phaedrus 279c; restates the value-thesis of socratic-intellectualism — only knowledge/virtue is unconditionally good (Critias and Eryxias are the resisting interlocutors). Reception value: a late-Academy restatement of Socratic value-conditionality — wealth good only "for gentlemen … who know in what situations they should use" it (397e), bad for the ignorant.

Axiochus — 364a–372a

A consolatio: death is nothing to fear — argued on mutually incompatible grounds at once. The Epicurean leg ("death concerns neither the living nor those who have passed away," 369b: while you are, it is not; when it is, you are not) is stacked with a Platonic leg (each of us is "a soul, an immortal living being locked up in a mortal prison," 365e, released at death to the heavenly aether), framed by the Apology disjunction (loss of consciousness or migration elsewhere, ≈ 40c) and capped by the Gobryas underworld myth. Echoes: the Phaedo's soul-as-prisoner immortality and the Apology's death-as-loss-or-migration. Reception value — FALSE FRIEND: the consolation-genre crystallized as a treasury of school-arguments (Epicurean + Stoic + Cynic + Platonic), reassurance prioritized over consistency; its soothing "death is nothing" is Epicurean doctrine ported into a Socratic frame, not Plato's thanatology.

Epigrams — 1–18

Short elegiac poems transmitted under Plato's name, some plausibly genuine: the Dion epigram (3) was, per Diogenes Laertius, actually inscribed on Dion's Syracuse tomb; the Aster poems (1–2, "You gaze at the stars, my Star; would that I were Heaven," Epigr. 1) carry strong external attestation, while the erotic poems to Agathon and Phaedrus (4, 6) are doubtful since both men were "two decades Plato's senior." Echoes: the biographical legend that Plato wrote tragedies before Socrates "enticed him into philosophy." Reception value: the corpus's clearest attribution problem — the Greek Anthologies give rival ascriptions, so these sit at the genuine-possible end of the spurious spectrum.

Concepts Developed

Reception-forms the spuria crystallize — not original philosophy, but the shapes Socratic–Platonic dialectic takes once it becomes curriculum.

  • the knowledge-condition turned into a dissolving dilemma — "only the knower acts/judges/uses rightly," the lever of genuine socratic-intellectualism, made the schematic engine of four works (On Justice, On Virtue, Sisyphus, Eryxias); no dedicated page.
  • frozen diairesis — collection-and-division sedimented into a ~185-term lexicon (Definitions); the method's residue, not its exercise.
  • elenchus-as-genre — the elenctic "what is X?" search reproduced as a schematic, dramatically-inert form reaching aporia by formula.
  • theia moira — virtue as a god-given dispensation rather than teaching or nature (On Virtue), borrowed from the Meno's close and made the flat positive thesis.
  • value-as-knowledge-relative — wealth and property revalued by knowledge of use, money exposed as convention (Eryxias 400d), driving the paradox that maximal wealth = maximal need.
  • consolatio / "death is nothing" — the consolation-genre assembled as a treasury of mutually-incompatible school-arguments (Axiochus); a false friend (see What's Not Obvious).

Concepts Referenced

Genuine concepts and dialogues the spuria borrow wholesale, as authority rather than as live material.

  • socratic-definition — the "what is X?" definitional project imitated as a genre, skeletal and aporetic.
  • anamnesis — the Meno's recollection that answers the paradox of inquiry the Sisyphus cites (389a) but leaves unsolved.
  • aporia — the schematic dead-end the elenctic spuria reach by formula rather than by inquiry.
  • Genuine dialogues cited or copied as external authority: Sophist 231d (Definitions), Meno 93d–94e (On Virtue, Sisyphus), Phaedo and Apology 40c (Axiochus), Euthydemus (Sisyphus, Eryxias), Republic 331b–d (On Justice).

Key Passages

"horos, definition: something said, comprised of genus and differentia" (Def. 414d) — the lexicon's self-definition. "sophist: paid hunter of rich and distinguished young men" (Def. 415c) — copied verbatim from Sophist 231d. "a just person is just because of his knowledge" (On Justice 375c) — the knowledge-condition. "virtue … comes by divine allotment to those who possess it" (On Virtue 379d) — theia moira. "nobody can ever try to find out anything that he knows" (Sisyphus 389a) — the Meno paradox cited, not resolved. "short-sighted judges of what is possible or impossible" (Halcyon §6) — the divine/human power gulf. "everything that turns out to be useful to us is property" (Eryxias 400d) — value indexed to knowledge of use. "death concerns neither the living nor those who have passed away" (Axiochus 369b) — the Epicurean leg in a Socratic frame. "You gaze at the stars, my Star; would that I were Heaven" (Epigr. 1) — the Aster epigram.

What's Not Obvious

  • The Definitions is collection-and-division sedimented into a dictionary — and you can see the seam. The sophist entry (Def. 415c) is lifted verbatim from Sophist 231d, a direct textual trace of the method's afterlife: where the genuine dialogues cut to a definition through live, self-correcting division, the lexicon stores the cut's product apart from the cutting and stacks several formulae per term — "collection" without the "division."
  • The Axiochus is a false friend, not Plato's thanatology. Its soothing "death concerns neither the living nor those who have passed away" (369b) is Epicurean doctrine (while you exist death is not; when death is present you are not), here ported into a Socratic frame and stacked with an incompatible Platonic immortality argument (the soul as "an immortal living being locked up in a mortal prison," 365e). The text is deliberately eclectic — reassurance over consistency — so it cannot stand as evidence for any unified Platonic view of death.
  • Four of the nine works run on one hidden engine: only the knower acts, judges, or uses rightly. On Justice ("a just person is just because of his knowledge," 375c), On Virtue (the missing recognizer-skill for virtue), Sisyphus (one cannot deliberate "about what he doesn't understand," 389c–d), and Eryxias (property useful only "to the one who knows how" to use it) all turn the same Socratic knowledge-condition — the lever of genuine socratic-intellectualism — into a schematic dissolving move. The spuria's real unity is methodological: they preserve the Academy's method-after-Plato.

Critique / Limitations

Spurious throughout. None of the nine is by Plato (Cooper's Spuria appendix; agreed not genuine), so derived content runs at low confidence and historical epistemic status. They span Old-Academy products of the latter fourth century (On Justice, On Virtue, Sisyphus, Eryxias), third-century sceptical-Academy exercises (Demodocus II–IV, under Arcesilaus), and Hellenistic-to-early-imperial showpieces (Halcyon c. 150 BCE–50 CE; Axiochus c. 100 BCE–50 CE).

Eclecticism. The Axiochus stacks mutually-incompatible school-arguments (Epicurean extinction vs. Platonic survival); the imitations are dramatically inert ("bald," per the editor) and philosophically derivative — useful as reception data, weak as philosophy. Do not read any of them as Plato's own positions.

Translator gaps. Confirmed in-text "Translated by" credits exist only for On Justice (Andrew S. Becker), Demodocus (Jonathan Barnes), Axiochus (Jackson P. Hershbell), and Epigrams (J. M. Edmonds, rev. John M. Cooper). Translators for Definitions, On Virtue, Sisyphus, Halcyon, and Eryxias could not be confirmed from the text and are left open — to be verified against the volume's front matter, not guessed (citation traceability).

Citation caveat. Halcyon carries no Stephanus numbers (omitted by Étienne; usually printed with the Lucianic corpus) and is cited by section (§); the Epigrams are cited by poem number.

Connections

  • is a case of collection-and-division — the Definitions is diairesis's sedimented output: the method's products (e.g. the Sophist 231d entry, copied verbatim at Def. 415c) stored as a lexicon apart from the live cutting that yields them.
  • enacts elenchus — On Justice, On Virtue, Sisyphus, and Eryxias reproduce the "what is X?" refutative search as a schematic, dramatically-inert genre that reaches aporia by formula rather than by inquiry.
  • requires socratic-definition — the elenctic spuria presuppose the Socratic definitional project (the "what is X?" question) even as they hollow it into a classroom exercise.
  • is a reformulation of plato-meno — On Virtue recapitulates the Meno's "can virtue be taught?" frame and its theia moira close, flattened into a flat positive doctrine.
  • applies ... to ... — Eryxias applies socratic-intellectualism to wealth and property, indexing their value to knowledge of use (only the knower uses rightly), restating that only knowledge/virtue is unconditionally good.
  • applies ... to ... — Halcyon applies the Phaedrus's myth-interpretation method to the metamorphosis-myth, making the impossible credible by the gulf between divine and human power (§6).
  • contrasts with plato-phaedo — Axiochus borrows the Phaedo's soul-as-prisoner immortality but stacks it with an incompatible Epicurean "death is nothing" (369b); a false friend, not Plato's thanatology.
  • contrasts with plato-hipparchus — the Hipparchus and Letters are dubia (disputed but defended by some); the Spuria sit at the agreed-not-genuine end of the same corpus authenticity gradient.

Open Questions

  • Does the corpus warrant a small "euboulia / deliberation-dissolved-by-the-knowledge-dilemma" node? Demodocus I and Sisyphus form a tight intra-spuria pair; the question is whether the move recurs in genuine texts (Charmides/Euthydemus "knowledge of use").
  • The reception thesis ("the spuria preserve the Academy's method-after-Plato") is single-source (this survey). It would gain weight only against other reception-layer material in the corpus — flag for a future audit Phase 8, not a present claim.
  • Translator attributions for five of the nine works remain unconfirmed; resolve from the volume's front matter rather than guessing.

Sources

  • Spuria, in Plato: Complete Works (Hackett, 1997), eds. John M. Cooper & D. S. Hutchinson — nine works:
    • Definitions (Horoi), Stephanus 411a–416.
    • On Justice, trans. Andrew S. Becker, Stephanus 372a–375d.
    • On Virtue, Stephanus 376a–379d.
    • Demodocus, trans. Jonathan Barnes, Stephanus 380a–386c.
    • Sisyphus, Stephanus 387b–391d.
    • Halcyon, §§1–8 (no Stephanus numbering; cited by section).
    • Eryxias, Stephanus 392a–406.
    • Axiochus, trans. Jackson P. Hershbell, Stephanus 364a–372a.
    • Epigrams, trans. J. M. Edmonds rev. John M. Cooper, poems 1–18 (cited by number).
  • Raw file lines 43914–45724 (all nine works and their D.S.H./J.M.C. editorial intros).
  • Depth layer: wiki/sources/.extraction-plato-spuria.md.