Plato and the Traditions of Ancient Literature: The Silent Stream

Richard Hunter

jan 2012 · Cambridge University Press

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Exploring both how Plato engaged with existing literary forms and how later literature then created 'classics' out of some of Plato's richest works, this book includes chapters on such subjects as rewritings of the Apology and re-imaginings of Socrates' defence, Plato's high style and the criticisms it attracted, and how Petronius and Apuleius threaded Plato into their wonderfully comic texts. The scene for these case studies is set through a thorough examination of how the tradition constructed the relationship between Plato and Homer, of how Plato adapted poetic forms of imagery to his philosophical project in the Republic, of shared techniques of representation between poet and philosopher and of foreshadowings of later modes of criticism in his Ion. This is a major contribution to Platonic studies, to the history of Platonic reception from the fourth century BC to the third century AD and to the literature of the Second Sophistic.

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Richard Hunter is Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. He has published extensively in the fields of Greek and Latin literature; his most recent books include The Shadow of Callimachus (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Critical Moments in Classical Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and (with Donald Russell) Plutarch: How to Study Poetry (De audiendis poetis) (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Many of his essays have been collected in the two-volume On Coming After: Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception (2008). He has edited the Journal of Hellenic Studies and is on the editorial board of Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics, Cambridge Classical Studies and several journals.