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Engaging with literary, in particular poetic tradition, revisiting it and adapting it to new contexts is a common occurrence in V-IV c. BCE Athens (Dalfen, Giuliano). Yet, few are the ancient authors who explore this practice either directly or indirectly in their work, offering a way to ‘meta-read’ their own production. This paper focuses on what I propose to call the ‘Odyssean meta-reading’ encoded in the work of Plato.

Recently, scholars have showed to what extent Plato ‘mixes traditional genres of discourse into his dialogues and disrupts the generic boundaries of both his own texts and the texts that he targets’ (Nightingale, 2). Alongside dialogues read against comedies (Capra), tragedies (Nussbaum), and rhetorical speeches (Barrett), readings of Plato’s works against Homer’s epics have been flourishing. Dialogues such as Phaedo, Apology, and Republic, have been called Socrates’ ‘Odysseys’ on the basis of fairly convincing parallels with Homer’s Odyssey (Gilead, Howland, Carrell). Still, limiting their scope to single dialogues, these studies lack an all-encompassing view of Plato’s production, which accounts for Plato’s authorial perspective. By grounding the ‘Odyssean reading’ in Plato’s overall production, this paper explores Plato’s ‘Odyssean reading’ (i.e. his ‘meta-reading’) and its extents; thereby, it re-contextualises the very ‘Odyssean way’ of reading Plato’s works. 

A pattern can be detected in Plato’s work – in this paper, I focus on Apology of Socrates, Crito, Republic, and Phaedo. From an intertextual, comparative analysis following Socrates’ citations of Homer’s epics in Apology (the only work that highlights what lies behind Socrates’ actions), two alternatives between which Socrates can choose arise: 1) remaining firm in his beliefs and confronting his enemies instead of saving his own life as an Achilles (Apology 28c-d, Iliad 18.98; Apology 31c-e, 36b-c, Iliad 18.96-97); 2) living and surviving as an Odysseus, adopting various stratagems to appease his audience (Apology 34c, Odyssey 19.163).

A further examination of Apology, paralleled with an intertextual study of Crito (44b2, Iliad 9.363), shows Socrates choosing an Achillean behaviour close to death. Then, a comparative, intertextual analysis of Republic presents Socrates living and surviving as an Odysseus, as portrayed by both Homer (Odyssey) and Plato (Republic 10.620c-d). A last comparative, intertextual exam of Phaedo allows to problematise the results and advance a conclusion: if Socrates’ wanderings around Athens, questioning people and searching for knowledge can be read in Odyssean terms (99d-102a), upon his death Socrates adopts not-Odyssean (here Thesean) heroic behaviours.

From this reassessment of the evidence, a revisitation of scholarly opinions ensues. While Apology, Crito, and Phaedo resist an ‘Odyssean meta-reading’, Republic fully emerges as the counterpart of the tale Odysseus utters at the court of the Phaeacians (Odyssey 9-12) for the Odyssean stratagems Socrates enacts – in particular, his Odyssean first-person narrative.

Therefore, in providing the opportunity to call into question the Odyssean readings of Plato’s works advanced so far and offering a different, more comprehensive view, this survey of Plato’s Odyssean ‘meta-reading’ of his works opens a fresh and innovative perspective for studying Plato’s production, poetics, and very way of engaging with literary tradition. (500)