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Of Caves, Lines, and Sea Travels: Plato’s Syracusan Voyages and the Central Analogies of the Republic

The central details of Plato’s Syracusan voyages are known with relative certainty: his friendship with Dion, brother-in-law of Dionysius I and uncle of Dionysius II, his return to Syracuse at the urging of Dion, who believed the younger tyrant willing to devote himself to true philosophy and rule according to its principles ; the undermining of Dion’s place in the tyrant’s confidence ; Dion’s exile and eventual murder ; how on his 3rd voyage Plato found himself under house arrest, from which he barely escaped with the help of his friend Archytas of Tarent, writer of constitutions and reformer in his own right. In my paper, I explore recent and older archaeological, historical, and seafaring evidence which sheds new light on the route Plato may have travelled to Syracuse and the motivation for his Sicilian voyages, as well as on the influence which Plato’s experiences en route may have had on the imagery and content of the central analogies of the Republic, the Analogies of the Sun, the Line, and the Cave. I address the question of how details of these analogies, in particular the unusual imagery of the Analogy of the Cave, may have been inspired by unique caves on the island of Hvar, caves inhabited or in regular use since the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age, lending support to the hypothesis that Plato travelled to Italy and Syracuse via one of the most important ancient seafaring routes used by the Greeks of the Western diaspora. This route follows the string of islands that stretch from the coast of present-day Croatia at Split via Hvar (gr. Pharos), Vis (gr. Issa), Palagruža, to Grand Sasso on the Italian coast, a route retraced in 2003 by the Expedition “Paros- Pharos-Paros” led by Split archaeologist and curator of the Archeological Museum of Split, Branko Kirigin. I consider evidence for the presence and activity of the ancient Greeks on the Eastern Adriatic islands before and during the period of Plato’s Sicilian voyages, that is, before colonization of Hvar and the establishment of the polis Pharos (today’s Stari grad) by inhabitants of the island of Paros in 385 BCE. Finally, I consider the historical and archaeological evidence from a number of caves of southern Dalmatia whose characteristics evoke important elements of the imagery and content of the Analogies of the Cave, the Sun and the Line. This historical, cultural and archaeological contextualization of the central analogies of the Republic contributes to a better understanding of the intention and significance of these seminal texts, and their role in the history of philosophy, not only with regard to their ontological and epistemological import, but with regard to the questions: how to live well, and how to realize justice in human society.

Plato, Syracuse, analogies, Sun, Line, Cave, caves, ancient seafaring, Pharos, justice, philosophy

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