In continuing to recognise Hipparchus and Minos as Platonic works, contrary to the opinion of many modern critics, I have to remind the reader, not only that both are included in the Canon of Thrasyllus, but that the Minos was expressly acknowledged by Aristophanes of Byzantium, and included by him among the Trilogies: showing that it existed then (220 B.C.) in the Alexandrine Museum as a Platonic work. The similarity between the Hipparchus and Minos is recognised by all the Platonic critics, most of whom declare that both of them are spurious. Schleiermacher affirms and vindicates this opinion in his Einleitung and notes: but it will be convenient to take the arguments advanced to prove the spuriousness, as they are set forth by M. Boeckh, in his “Comment. in Platonis qui vulgo fertur Minoem”: in which treatise, though among his early works, the case is argued with all that copious learning and critical ability, which usually adorn his many admirable contributions to the improvement of philology.

M. Boeckh not only rejects the pretensions of Hipparchus and Minos to be considered as works of Plato, but advances an affirmative hypothesis to show what they are. He considers these two dialogues, together with those De Justo, and De Virtute (two short dialogues in the pseudo-Platonic list, not recognised by Thrasyllus) as among the dialogues published by Simon; an Athenian citizen and a shoemaker by trade, in whose shop Sokrates is said to have held many of his conversations. Simon is reported to have made many notes of these conversations, and to have composed and published, from them, a volume of thirty-three dialogues (Diog. L. ii. 122), among the titles of which there are two — ?e?? F???e?d??? and ?e?? ????. Simon was, of course, contemporary with Plato; but somewhat older in years. With this part of M. Boeckh’s treatise, respecting the supposed authorship of Simon, I have nothing to do. I only notice the arguments by which he proposes to show that Hipparchus and Minos are not works of Plato.

In the first place, I notice that M. Boeckh explicitly recognises them as works of an author contemporary with Plato, not later than 380 B.C. (p. 46). Hereby many of the tests, whereby we usually detect spurious works, become inapplicable.

In the second place, he admits that the dialogues are composed in good Attic Greek, suitable to the Platonic age both in character and manners — “At veteris esse et Attici scriptoris, probus sermo, antiqui mores, totus denique character, spondeat,” p. 32.

The reasons urged by M. Boeckh to prove the spuriousness of the Minos, are first, that it is unlike Plato — next, that it is too much like Plato. “Dupliciter dialogus a Platonis ingenio discrepat: partim quod parum, partim quod nimium, similis ceteris ejusdem scriptis sit. Parum similis est in rebus permultis. Nam cum Plato adhuc vivos ac videntes aut nuper defunctos notosque homines, ut scenicus poeta actores, moribus ingeniisque accurate descriptis, nominatim producat in medium — in isto opusculo cum Socrate colloquens persona planÉ incerta est ac nomine carens: quippe cum imperitus scriptor esset artis illius colloquiis suis dulcissimas veneres illas inferendi, quÆ ex peculiaribus personarum moribus pingendis redundant, atque À Platone ut flores per amplos dialogorum hortos sunt disseminatÆ” (pp. 7-8): again, p. 9, it is complained that there is an “infinitus secundarius collocutor” in the Hipparchus.

Now the sentence, just transcribed from M. Boeckh, shows that he had in his mind as standard of comparison, a certain number of the Platonic works, but that he did not take account of all of them. The Platonic Protagoras begins with a dialogue between Sokrates and an unknown, nameless person; to whom Sokrates, after a page of conversation with him, recounts what has just passed between himself, Protagoras, and others. Next, if we turn to the SophistÊs and Politikus, we find that in both of them, not simply the secundarius collocutor, but even the principal speaker, is an unknown and nameless person, described only as a Stranger from Elea, and never before seen by Sokrates. Again, in the Leges, the principal speaker is only an ????a??? ?????, without a name. In the face of such analogies, it is unsafe to lay down a peremptory rule, that no dialogue can be the work of Plato, which acknowledges as collocutor an unnamed person.

Then again — when M. Boeckh complains that the Hipparchus and Minos are destitute of those “flores et dulcissimÆ Veneres” which Plato is accustomed to spread through his dialogues — I ask, Where are the “dulcissimÆ Veneres” in the ParmenidÊs, SophistÊs, Politikus, Leges, TimÆus, Kritias? I find none. The presence of “dulcissimÆ Veneres” is not a condition sine qu non, in every composition which pretends to Plato as its author: nor can the absence of them be admitted as a reason for disallowing Hipparchus and Minos.

The analogy of the SophistÊs and Politikus (besides Symposium, Republic, and Leges) farther shows, that there is nothing wonderful in finding the titles of Hipparchus and Minos derived from the subjects (?e?? F???e?d??? and ?e?? ????), not from the name of one of the collocutors:— whether we suppose the titles to have been bestowed by Plato himself, or by some subsequent editor (Boeckh, p. 10).

To illustrate his first ground of objection — Dissimilarity between the Minos and the true Platonic writings — M. Boeckh enumerates (pp. 12-23) several passages of the dialogue which he considers unplatonic. Moreover, he includes among them (p. 12) examples of confused and illogical reasoning. I confess that to me this evidence is noway sufficient to prove that Plato is not the author. That certain passages may be picked out which are obscure, confused, inelegant — is certainly no sufficient evidence. If I thought so, I should go along with Ast in rejecting the EuthydÊmus, Menon, LachÊs, CharmidÊs, Lysis, &c., against all which Ast argues as spurious, upon evidence of the same kind. It is not too much to say, that against almost every one of the dialogues, taken severally, a case of the same kind, more or less plausible, might be made out. You might in each of them find passages peculiar, careless, awkwardly expressed. The expression t?? ?????pe?a? ?????? t?? s?at??, which M. Boeckh insists upon so much as improper, would probably have been considered as a mere case of faulty text, if it had occurred in any other dialogue: and so it may fairly be considered in the Minos.

Moreover as to faults of logic and consistency in the reasoning, most certainly these cannot be held as proving the Minos not to be Plato’s work. I would engage to produce, from most of his dialogues, defects of reasoning quite as grave as any which the Minos exhibits. On the principle assumed by M. Boeckh, every one who agreed with PanÆtius in considering the elaborate proof given in the PhÆdon, of the immortality of the soul, as illogical and delusive — would also agree with PanÆtius in declaring that the PhÆdon was not the work of Plato. It is one question, whether the reasoning in any dialogue be good or bad: it is another question, whether the dialogue be written by Plato or not. Unfortunately, the Platonic critics often treat the first question as if it determined the second.

M. Boeckh himself considers that the evidence arising from dissimilarity (upon which I have just dwelt) is not the strongest part of his case. He relies more upon the evidence arising from too much similarity, as proving still more clearly the spuriousness of the Minos. “Jam pergamus ad alteram partem nostrÆ argumentationis, eamque etiam firmiorem, de nimia similitudine Platonicorum aliquot locorum, quÆ imitationem doceat subesse. Nam de hoc quidem conveniet inter omnes doctos et indoctos, Platonem se ipsum haud posse imitari: nisi si quis dubitet de san ejus mente” (p. 23). Again, p. 26, “Jam vero in nostro colloquio Symposium, Politicum, Euthyphronem, Protagoram, Gorgiam, Cratylum, PhilÊbum, dialogos expressos ac tantum non compilatos reperies”. And M. Boeckh goes on to specify various passages of the Minos, which he considers to have been imitated, and badly imitated, from one or other of these dialogues.

I cannot agree with M. Boeckh in regarding this nimia similitudo as the strongest part of his case. On the contrary, I consider it as the weakest: because his own premisses (in my judgment) not only do not prove his conclusion, but go far to prove the opposite. When we find him insisting, in such strong language, upon the great analogy which subsists between the Minos and seven of the incontestable Platonic dialogues, this is surely a fair proof that its author is the same as their author. To me it appears as conclusive as internal evidence ever can be; unless there be some disproof aliunde to overthrow it. But M. Boeckh produces no such disproof. He converts these analogies into testimony in his own favour, simply by bestowing upon them the name imitatio, — stulta imitatio (p. 27). This word involves an hypothesis, whereby the point to be proved is assumed — viz.: difference of authorship. “Plato cannot have imitated himself” (M. Boeckh observes). I cannot admit such impossibility, even if you describe the fact in that phrase: but if you say “Plato in one dialogue thought and wrote like Plato in another” — you describe the same fact in a different phrase, and it then appears not merely possible but natural and probable. Those very real analogies, to which M. Boeckh points in the word imitatio, are in my judgment cases of the Platonic thought in one dialogue being like the Platonic thought in another. The similitudo, between Minos and these other dialogues, can hardly be called nimia, for M. Boeckh himself points out that it is accompanied with much difference. It is a similitude, such as we should expect between one Platonic dialogue and another: with this difference, that whereas, in the Minos, Plato gives the same general views in a manner more brief, crude, abrupt — in the other dialogues he works them out with greater fulness of explanation and illustration, and some degree of change not unimportant. That there should be this amount of difference between one dialogue of Plato and another appears to me perfectly natural. On the other hand — that there should have been a contemporary falsarius (scriptor miser, insulsus, vilissimus, to use phrases of M. Boeckh), who studied and pillaged the best dialogues of Plato, for the purpose of putting together a short and perverted abbreviation of them — and who contrived to get his miserable abbreviation recognised by the Byzantine Aristophanes among the genuine dialogues notwithstanding the existence of the Platonic school — this, I think highly improbable.

I cannot therefore agree with M. Boeckh in thinking, that “ubique se prodens Platonis imitatio” (p. 31) is an irresistible proof of spuriousness: nor can I think that his hypothesis shows itself to advantage, when he says, p. 10 — “Ipse autem dialogus (Minos) quum post Politicum compositus sit, quod quÆdam in eo dicta rebus ibi expositis manifestÉ nitantur, ut paullo post ostendemus — quis est qui artificiosissimum philosophum, postquam ibi (in Politico) accuratius de natur legis egisset, de e iterum putet negligenter egisse?” — I do not think it so impossible as it appears to M. Boeckh, that a philosopher, after having written upon a given subject accuratius, should subsequently write upon it negligenter. But if I granted this ever so fully, I should still contend that there remains another alternative. The negligent workmanship may have preceded the accurate: an alternative which I think is probably the truth, and which has nothing to exclude it except M. Boeckh’s pure hypothesis, that the Minos must have been copied from the Politikus.

While I admit then that the Hipparchus and Minos are among the inferior and earlier compositions of Plato, I still contend that there is no ground for excluding them from the list of his works. Though the Platonic critics of this century are for the most part of an adverse opinion, I have with me the general authority of the critics anterior to this century — from Aristophanes of Byzantium down to Bentley and Ruhnken — see Boeckh, pp. 7-32.

Yxem defends the genuineness of the Hipparchus — (Ueber Platon’s Kleitophon, p. 8. Berlin, 1846).