Note 42 — Chapter VI · PLATONIC CANON, AS RECOGNISED BY THRASYLLUS.

See the Epigram out of the Anthology, and the extract from the Scholia on the Categories of Aristotle, cited by Wyttenbach in his note on the beginning of the Phædon. A more important passage (which he has not cited) from the Scholia on Aristotle, is, that of Asklepius on the Metaphysica, p. 991; Scholia, ed. Brandis, p. 576, a. 38. Ὅτι τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐστιν ὁ Φαίδων, σαφῶς ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης δηλοῖ — Παναίτιος γὰρ τις ἐτόλμησε νοθεῦσαι τὸν διάλογον. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἔλεγεν εἶναι θνητὴν τὴν ψυχήν, ἐβούλετο συγκατασπάσαι τὸν Πλάτωνα· ἐπεὶ οὖν ἐν τῷ Φαίδωνι σαφῶς ἀπαθανατίζει (Plato) τὴν λογικὴν ψυχήν, τούτου χάριν ἐνόθευσε τὸν διάλογον. Wyttenbach vainly endeavours to elude the force of the passages cited by himself, and to make out that the witnesses did not mean to assert that Panætius had declared the Phædon to be spurious. One of the reasons urged by Wyttenbach is — “Nec illud negligendum, quod dicitur ὑπὸ Παναιτίου τινὸς, à Panætio quodam neque per contemptum dici potuisse neque a Syriano neque ab hoc anonymo; quorum neuter eâ fuit doctrinæ inopia, ut Panætii laudes et præstantiam ignoraret.” But in the Scholion of Asklepius on the Metaphysica (which passage was not before Wyttenbach), we find the very same expression Παναίτιός τις, and plainly used per contemptum: for Asklepius probably considered it a manifestation of virtuous feeling to describe, in contemptuous language, a philosopher who did not believe in the immortality of the soul. We have only to read the still harsher and more contemptuous language which he employs towards the Manicheans, in another Scholion, p. 666, b. 5, Brandis.

Favorinus said (Diog. iii. 37) that when Plato read aloud the Phædon, Aristotle was the only person present who remained to the end: all the other hearers went away in the middle. I have no faith in this anecdote: I consider it, like so many others in Diogenes, as a myth: but the invention of it indicates, that there were many persons who had no sympathy with the Phædon, taking at the bottom the same view as Panætius.