Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/720

Noch ein Wort über die Abfassungszeit des platonischen Theätet. E. Zeller. A. f. G. Ph., V, 3, pp. 289-301.

Z. had treated this subject in the Archiv, IV, 189 ff. In reply to this E. Rohde published an article in Philologus N. F., IV, 1-12. The present article is written in reply to Rohde. The one point taken up for consideration is Theait. 1 74 E f., where Plato speaks of people who boast of twenty-five ancestors and who trace their genealogy back to Herakles, the son of Amphitryon. From this and even 174 D, Rohde tries to show that the Theaitetos must be later than the Euagoras of Isokrates. Bergk and Rohde see in the man with twenty-five ancestors a Spartan king. In order to make use of the passage in this way Z. says three conditions must first be fulfilled: 1) we must know whether the king here mentioned speaks really of twenty-five ancestors, and whether he does not reckon himself as the twenty-fifth from Herakles; 2) we must be able to say whether, amongst the twenty-five ancestors, Amphitryon is counted or not; 3) we must be in possession of the list of ancestors on which the king based his count. Of these three points not one can be fixed with certainty. This had been proven of the first two points by Z. in Ar. IV, 201 f. He asks in reference to 3) whether we can restore the list from the catalogues of Spartan kings, furnished us by Pausanias and Herodotus. Z. answers this negatively, and points out that the lists of Pausanias and Herodotus, in some instances decisive for the reckoning of the πρόγονοι, contradict each other. Z. believes the king here referred to is Agesipolis I, of whose twenty-five predecessors, from and including Herakles, twenty-two were his direct ancestors, and of the remaining three, two were brothers, and one a brother's son of a direct ancestor. After an investigation of the notion πρόγονος, in which Z. shows it to mean both predecessor in office and forefather, he says that from this passage of the Theaitetos, taken by itself, the date of composition cannot be determined, because too many doubtful hypotheses must be associated with it. It can be of weight only when taken with other less doubtful evidences of the date. The probable date, as Z. believes he has elsewhere proven, and which is in harmony with this passage, is 391 B.C., in the time of Agesipolis I.