over ideas—for Plato welcomed the open-ended pursuit of wisdom with philosophical friends. Aristotle, the most famous product of Plato’s school, recalled witnessing sharp disagreements between Plato and some of his most prominent research associates. In this respect, the Academy was a radically different kind of community from the Pythagorean fellowships, simply because Plato upheld in practice the Socratic maxim that “there is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.”
Besides presenting himself in this way as an example for his associates to emulate, Plato produced a number of written works in these years, almost all depicting exemplary philosophical conversations. These texts evidently formed part of the curriculum, since Plato seems to have made a practice of reading his dialogues aloud to friends and followers. Scrolls were also deposited and preserved in the Academy’s library. According to the canon of Plato’s works established sometime in the first century A.D. by Thrasyllus, an astrologer and Platonist who lived in Alexandria, the body of Plato’s writing consisted of the thirteen letters and thirty-five dialogues. Of the works in this canon, the majority—twenty in all—are Sokratikoi logoi, dramatic dialogues built around the character of Plato’s most important hero.
In none of his writings, apart from the letters, does Plato speak in his own voice or advance any opinions as his own. In some of the dialogues, the characters, including Socrates above all, present and vehemently defend specific views on ethics, the nature of reality, and the character of genuine knowledge. But in most dialogues, a close reading suggests that no conclusive results have been reached. Such subtleties in the corpus of the Platonic texts led ancient readers to sharply disagree about whether Plato meant primarily to provoke a global skepticism, or rather to transmit a few authoritative doctrines (for example, about the reality of the Forms, the immortality of soul, and the ideal political regime of the philosopher-king). They also disagreed about whether the best life resulted from the endless search for wisdom or from acting in accord with acknowledged truths.
Plato’s written works apparently reached a relatively wide audience, even in Plato’s own lifetime. In a fragment that has survived from one of his lost dialogues, Aristotle describes a farmer from Corinth who has read Plato’s dialogue Gorgias. Overwhelmed, the farmer “at once gave up his farm and his vines, mortgaged his soul to Plato, and sowed and planted Plato’s views there.”
Gorgias is a good example of Plato’s literary style—and also of the political interests that are never far from the center of his concerns. Although scholars cannot agree on precise dates for the composition of different dialogues, it is not unlikely that the Gorgias was written shortly after Plato’s trip to southern Italy and the founding of the Academy.
Like every other dialogue, the Gorgias has a dramatic unity of its own, even when treating themes, arguments, and ideas that are elaborated in more detail in other dialogues. It revolves around the fictional representation of five more or less historical characters: Socrates; Chaerephon, the disciple who asked the Delphic oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates; Callicles of Acharnae, an aristocratic young man depicted as an associate of oligarchs and a demagogue willing to advance his career by flattering a demos he holds in contempt; Polus of Acragas (b. c. 440), a Sicilian expert on rhetoric; and Gorgias of Leontini (c. 485–c. 380), also from Sicily, the most influential orator of his generation (he visited Athens in 427, supposedly took Diogenes the Cynic as a student, and is said to have lived past the age of one hundred).
In some of his dialogues, Plato takes care to establish a dramatic date, but not in the Gorgias. The setting is equally vague, though the Athenian context is not. We are reminded that Athens is a democracy ostensibly ruled by the people in the Assembly, and that orators like Gorgias claim to be able to help aristocrats like Callicles to acquire political power by perfecting their ability to persuade the people gathered in the regular meetings of the demos. We are also reminded of the fate that awaits Socrates at the hands of this regime. “In this city,” Plato has Socrates say, “anything can happen to anybody.”
Gorgias has just finished a public display of rhetorical prowess, a series of speeches improvised in response to questions from an audience, when Socrates and Chaerephon arrive. A conversation unfolds in front of a crowd that at one point bursts into applause. We, as readers, join the crowd of