Socratic Synousia : A Post-Platonic Myth?

Abstract

This paper questions whether the relationship between Socrates and his young followers could ever have been treated by Plato in the same fashion as it is treated in the Platonic Theages, where the terminology of synousia is repeatedly applied to it. It argues that in minimizing the part played by knowledge, and in maximizing the role of the divine and of erōs, the work creates a 'Socrates' who conforms to the educational ideology of the Academy of Polemo in the period 314-270 B.C. I indicate how this may assist our understanding of Arcesilaus' Socraticism, and suggest ways in which the work may have found its present place in the corpus.

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