Epistles (Plato)

The Epistles (Greek: Ἐπιστολαί; Latin: Epistolae) of Plato are a series of thirteen letters traditionally included in the Platonic corpus. Their authenticity has been the subject of some dispute, and scholarly consensus has shifted back and forth over time. They were "generally accepted as genuine until modern times"; but by the close of the nineteenth century, many philologists (such as Richard Bentley, Christoph Meiners, and Friedrich Ast) believed that none of the letters were actually written by Plato. Now every letter except the First has some defenders of its authenticity. The Twelfth is also widely regarded as a forgery, and the Fifth and Ninth have fewer supporters than the others.

The Epistles focus mostly on Plato's time in Syracuse and his influence on the political figures Dion and Dionysius. They are generally biographical rather than philosophical, although several, notably the Seventh Letter, gesture at the doctrines of Plato's philosophy. Only two, the Second and Seventh, directly reference Plato's teacher Socrates, the major figure within his philosophical dialogues.

The two letters that are most commonly claimed to have actually been written by Plato are the Seventh and the Eighth, on the supposition that these were open letters and therefore less likely to be the result of invention or forgery. This is not so much because of a presumption in favor of an open letter's authenticity as because of a presumption against that of a private letter: the preservation of the former is unsurprising, while the preservation, dissemination, and eventual publication of the latter requires some sort of explanation. Nevertheless, even the Seventh Letter has recently been argued to be spurious by prominent scholars, such as Malcolm Schofield,Myles Burnyeat, and Julia Annas.George Boas argues that all of the Epistles, including the Seventh, are spurious, a conclusion accepted also, and more recently, by Terence Irwin. On the other hand, Grote, Raeder, Novotny, Harward, and Bluck reject only the First; and Bentley accepted all of them.

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