Research On Plato’s Miscellaneous Works

The thesis of this paper is about Plato’s Miscellaneous Works.Thrasyllus compiled all of Plato’s works into nine volumes, while I collect all those works which are independent of the nine-volume version and under the name of Plato, and name them Miscellaneous Works, which can also be called Miscellaneous Volume, Last Volume, Ending Volume, or Plato’s Complete Works, Vol. X according to the nine-volume pattern. My main work is the collection, compilation, and translation of the texts, plus the dividing into chapters and giving of titles, annotations, and some tentative reviews.The Miscellaneous Works included in the authoritative English version of Plato’s Complete Works by Cooper can be said to be the most abundant, but its Epigrammata only collects18maxims, nor does it collect Tragic Sentences. Other collections of Plato’s works generally not only collect few verses and do not collect Tragic Sentences, but also do not collect Alcyon of the seven spurious dialogues. I collect all these works, especially the original Greek text of Alcyon (see Appendix). About the titles, all versions of Plato’s works generally have only one simple title in the part of Miscellaneous Works. I not only unifiy all miscellaneous articles into four small series, and formulate respectively title name to them, but also give main title and subtitle to all the seven spurious dialogues on the basis of Thrasyllus’ editing style. Furthermore, in order to facilitate readers to read and grasp, I also divide all miscellaneous articles into chapters and give subtitles to them all in detail.For the original Greek texts collected by me, the Miscellaneous Works includes4sections, Definitiones, Spuria, Epigrammata, and Fragmenta Tragica, each compiled into a small series. The first series Definitiones is a small dictionary containning about185items of very important philosophical significance, which consists of two parts of separate collections; I put them into four parts:definitions of natural philosophy, definitions of ethics, definitions of cognitive and linguistic philosophy, and miscellany definitions. The second series Spuria is the main part of the paper, it contains7unique dialogues:the first Singer explores issues on justice, the main issue is that the unjust acts unjustly involuntary; the second Horse-lover explores what the virtue is, and then turning to the exploration of whether virtue can be taught. the third Demodocus constitutes of four relatively independent parts, it investigates the authenticity concerning those common-senses in people’s real life; the fourth Sisyphus explores counseling different from exploring which is a kind of self-knowing ignorance; the fifth Alcyon is an discussion on transformation raised from a legend of human being turned into a bird, in these seven dialogues, it is the shortest one; the sixth Eryxias is the longest one, and like Plato him self s Socratic dialogue, it is extremely careful and detailed, it explores the question of virtue and wealth; the seventh Axiochus is a comfort-stylistic dialogue, which are some comforting arguments to a dying man, and an exploration on the problem of death. The third series Epigrammata consists of33poems composed in elegiac sentence, which are meaningful and interesting, it really has some profound morally-provoking meaning. The fourth Series Fragmenta Tragica consists of3remnant sentences which have profound tragic tension, they are characteristic of both tragic and comedic meaning.For the academic rearch on this area and the reference material available is quite poor, so this research paper based mainly on annotations and commentaries can be regard as a beginning for Chinese scholars to make a systematic study of Plato’s Miscellaneous Works, its main purpose is to provide a tentative text for myself and those who have the same interest as me. The translation is mainly according to English, with reference to original Greek. I present the translations personally for some verses of the third series and all sentences of the fourth Series without English text on the basis of extensive access to dictionary and wide discourse with teachers and students of the same discipline. So, whether it is with regard to in the annotation and analysis, or to the chapter dividing and translation, there will be inevitably a large number of fallacious, I hope that further study can be improved and perfected.