1. Here the eristic is directly contrary to the atmosphere that Plato wants to prevail in philosophical discussion; cf. Republic 492 C.

2. Behind this part of the epilogue stands the Olympic event of the pancration, in which the athlete who first brings his opponent to the ground for three falls wins the victory. On the surface of the work's structure, the brothers are assumed to have achieved these three falls in episodes one, three, and five. Thus, the mock epinician ode, immediately following the fifth, is not an accident of literary arrangement.

3. Socrates signals the transition to his encomium with (303 C 3).

4. For example, when Socrates says that he has seen "no men so wise" (303 C 1), he means, by ironic inversion, that the brothers are the very paradigm of the "not-wise" or "ignorant"; in his remarks at 303 C 4-5, continues the fiction that they are "blessed" gods for their acquisition of virtue; refers to their baseborn talent to pervert philosophical wonder; has the undertone of "rashly'' or "too quickly"; and hints at the fact that they have destroyed dialectic.

5. As the primary instance of this type, we have Crito (304 C 8).

6. Cf. 284 E for the coldhearted nature of eristic discourse.

7. See 286 B 7, 297 A 8, and 299 C 8. For the critic of philosophy, shame attaches to Crito for simply being the friend of someone who partakes in this wordplay (305 A 2).

8. See R. K. Sprague ( Translation , p. 62 n. 106) and R. S. W. Haw-trey ( Commentary on Plato's Euthydemus [Philadelphia, 1981], pp. 186-187).

9. We can see the broader application of this passage (305 D 6-E 1) if we note that points forward to the upcoming general claim; that the use of the topical exemplum "white ," which has no direct point of contact with any previous passage, clearly indicates that Socrates is moving away from the immediate text to a general overview; that expands the entire focus so as to include the whole array of philosophical-pairs ; and that the denial that one thing is different from other things refers quite generally to the power of eristic to wipe out all distinctions.

10. For earlier parodies of this theme, see 286 E 8-9, 288 A 5-6, and 301 C 3-5.

11. See 275 C 1 and 295 A 4.

12. But if they only talk to each other, then of course they cannot create an artificial demand in the marketplace for what the public doesn't need.

13. W. H. Thompson still provides the best analysis of the difficulties involved in trying to identify this critic; The Phaedrus of Plato (London, 1868), app. II, pp. 170-183.

14. For Lysias and Antiphon, see Jowett ( The Dialogues of Plato , vol. 1, 4th ed. [Oxford, 1953], pp. 202-203); for Polycrates, see Hermann ( Geschichte und System [Heidelberg, 1839], p. 629); for Thrasymachus, see A. G. Winckelmann ( Platonis Euthydemus [Leipzig, 1833], xxxiv); and for Antiphon, see A. E. Taylor ( Plato, the Man and His Work [London, 1927], p. 101). The best case for Isocrates is given by W. H. Thompson ( The Phaedrus of Plato , pp. 179-182), who is supported in this by George Grote ( Plato and the other Companions of Socrates [London, 1865], 1: 561), Paul Shorey ( What Plato Said [Chicago, 1933], pp. 167-168), G. C. Field ( Plato and His Contemporaries [London, 1930], p. 193), and I. M. Crombie ( An Examination of Plato's Doctrines [London, 1963], 1: 224). The best case against Isocrates can be found in Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff ( Platon , 5th ed. [Berlin, 1959], 1: 304 and 2: 165-167) and Paul Friedländer ( Plato , 2d ed. [Princeton, 1969], 1: 194), who both argue that the critic is a type , not a specifiable individual.

15. In addition to calling the epilogue an "afterthought" ( Plato ,

p. 556), Grote thinks that Plato wrote it "without reflecting whether it is consistent or not with what had preceded" (p. 559). Grote does suggest that up until this point where the epilogue is introduced the Euthydemus was "among the most popular of all the Platonic dialogues: not merely because of its dramatic vivacity and charm of expression, but because it would be heartily welcomed by the numerous enemies of Dialectic at Athens" (p. 555). For Taylor, the epilogue is a "sort of an appendix'' to a "minor'' dialogue ( Plato, the Man and His Work , p. 100).

16. We should imagine that after a nights sleep, Crito awoke and went searching for Socrates to question him about what took place in the Lyceum.

17. For these vocative addresses, see 275 C 5, 283 A 1 and B 1, 292 E 8, 294 D 7, and, finally, 303 A 4 and 303 B 1.

18. Neither Crito nor the critic acknowledges that Socrates advised the brothers to keep their argument-game out of the public realm (304 A-B). One of Plato's strongest objections to eristic is precisely the hostility that it engenders when it is given public expression; see Parmenides 135 C-137 B and Grote ( Plato , pp. 532-534).

19. Since the critic knows that Crito and Socrates are friends (305 A 2), he can assume that Crito will pass along this warning.

20. The antithesis between seeming and being continues throughout this final section; the goal of this class is to appear first ( ), whereas in reality they are third , and we are to judge them to be such as they are ( : 305 C 5-7). Crito, too, confirms that the critic imagines himself to be wise ( : 304 D 5).

21. Cf. Republic 494 A and Gorgias 487 C-D 2. These critics are lovers of opinion, not wisdom.

22. Grote ( Plato , p. 559) and Leo Strauss ("On the Euthydemus," Interpretation 1 [1970], 20) have misunderstood this point. Both assume that Socrates is here citing Euthydemus as the true representative of philosophy. But since (305 D 7) depends upon (305 D 2), Socrates is clearly presenting the view of the class that takes "those about Euthydemus" to represent philosophy.

23. Since the critic travels upon the horizontal axis of contentious debaters, he has attained the middle ground that is the distortion of the true middle . Socrates and Kleinias also find themselves in the middle between the poles (271 A 8-B 8), but their orientation is directed upward, toward what is good, better, and best, and ultimately toward the divine, where God, not man, is the measure.

24. The use of here (306 D 5) should cast light on the disputed meaning of at 271 B 3. What prompts Crito to recall

Critobulus is the critical moment of his sons age, not his size; see G. J. De Vries, "Notes on Some Passages in the Euthydemus," Mnemosyne 25 (1972), 42.

25. Plato's account of the origin, generation, and full force of this slander continues until 497 A. The critics of philosophy turn out m be those (480 A) whose refutation requires that Socrates unfold the true philosophical nature, as lover of wisdom (484 A-487 A).

26. Besides "utterly wicked ," "useless ," and "bastards ," Socrates also calls these perverse philosophers , and (with , cf. , 306 E 5). These sham artists give birth to "sophisms" ( : 496 A 8), the only use of this term in Plato that approaches the sense given m it by Aristotle (see Topics 8.162 A 16-17).

27. Cf. Republic 487 B-D with Euthydemus 305 A 4.

28. We have at last uncovered why the Euthydemus has always been a goldmine for unitarians. It is difficult to escape the impression that the "fixing" of the Euthydemus before the Meno has not been carried out by scholars who were entirely motivated by disinterested curiosity. Rather, there seems to be at work here a desire to identify the Socratic episodes of the dialogue as evidence for the Plato who speaks for Socrates in the early dialogues and, therefore, as evidence for "Socratic" as opposed to "Platonic" philosophy. In this project the dating hypothesis has functioned as a convenient tool for expanding the evidence of that Socratic philosophy. The inadequacy of this method, however, has been glaringly revealed in its inability to account thus far for more than twenty pages of Burnet's text. If the partisans of development are still satisfied with their pre- Meno date, then our analysis has shown that even in an "early" or ''transitional'' dialogue, Plato can consciously and deliberately treat problems that he usually reserves for middle or late works, and so the Euthydemus provides irrefutable evidence for the essential unity of its author's thought. Or if, as is more likely, they now want to place the Euthydemus with or after the Meno , then it is "Platonic" philosophy that must undergo the expansion of the evidence, and as a result they are now required to admit that the Euthydemus constitutes a significant contribution to the mature, fully developed phase of its author's thought. Either way, the current trend in Euthydemian criticism is refuted, and Paul Shorey is again proven to be correct.

29. Harold Cherniss, Selected Papers (Leiden, 1977), p. 284.

30. By fusing the twofold , eristic and dialectic, in his single dialogue, Plato instantiates what G. B. Kerferd has identified as the

art of antilogic. "It consists," he tells us, "in opposing one logos to another logos, or in discovering or drawing attention to the presence of such an opposition in an argument or in a thing or state of affairs" ( The Sophistic Movement [Cambridge, 1981], p. 63); cf. Cherniss ( Selected Papers , p. 28). It is fair to say then that the Euthydemus constitutes not only Plato's grandiose satire on sophistic antilogy but also his correction of its defects. As such, this dialogue not only deserves to be considered by scholars who analyze the problems of antilogy in Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, and others; it also should figure prominently in discussions on the Parmenides, Theaetetus , and, above all, the Sophist , where the name that most especially identifies the beast is ( Sophist 232 B).