Note 45 — Chapter VI · PLATONIC CANON, AS RECOGNISED BY THRASYLLUS.

Diog. L. iii. 57. πρώτην μὲν οὖν τετραλογίαν τίθησι τὴν κοινὴν ὑπόθεσιν ἔχουσαν· παραδεῖξαι γὰρ βούλεται ὅποιοις ἂν εἴη ὁ τοῦ φιλοσόφου βίος. Albinus, Introduct. ad Plat. c. 4, p. 149, in K. F. Hermann’s Append. Platon.

Thrasyllus appears to have considered the Republic as ten dialogues and the Leges as twelve, each book (of Republic and of Leges) constituting a separate dialogue, so that he made the Platonic works fifty-six in all. But for the purpose of his tetralogies he reckoned them only as thirty-six — nine groups.

The author of the Prolegomena τῆς Πλάτωνος Φιλοσοφίας in Hermann’s Append. Platon. pp. 218-219, gives the same account of the tetralogies, and of the connecting bond which united the four members of the first tetralogical group: but he condemns altogether the principle of the tetralogical division. He does not mention the name of Thrasyllus. He lived after Proklus (p. 218), that is, after 480 A.D.

The argument urged by Wyttenbach and others — that Varro must have considered the Phædon as fourth in the order of the Platonic compositions — an argument founded on a passage in Varro. L. L. vii. 37, which refers to the Phædon under the words Plato in quarto — this argument becomes inapplicable in the text as given by O. Müller — not Varro in quarto but Varro in quattuor fluminibus, &c. Mullach (Democriti Frag. p. 98) has tried unsuccessfully to impugn Müller’s text, and to uphold the word quarto with the inference resting upon it.