【英文原著类】alcibiades i(阿尔西比得斯工).pdf

ALCIBIADES I
ALCIBIADES I
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

1
ALCIBIADES I
APPENDIX I.
It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings
of Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which is
of much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues of a
century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the
Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty
concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to
him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and
some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken.
Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular author,
general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the
genuineness of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are
more likely to have been forged, or to have received an erroneous
designation, than longer ones; and some kinds position, such as
epistles or panegyrical orations, are more liable to suspicion than others;
those, again, which have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later
age, or the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive
or some affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which seem to
have originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical
author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no instance of any ancient
writing proved to be a forgery, bines excellence with length.
A really great and original writer would have no object in fathering his
works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator, the 'literary hack' of
Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant originality or genius.
Further, in attempting to balance the evidence for and against a Platonic
dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the Platonic writing was
common to several of his contemporaries. Aeschines, Euclid, Phaedo,
Antisthenes, and in the ne