THE START OF THE JOURNEY

In this passage from Plato's Phaedo, Socrates is making a mythological and philosophical argument, arguing for the immortality of the soul by referring to traditional myths well known to his interlocutors as he prepares to tell his own myth of life after death, the Phaedo's fantastic vision of the many levels of the earth. But Socrates is not merely mentioning a myth well known to his audience; he is contesting it. In place of Aeschylus' myth of a journey to the underworld, Socrates proposes his own different version of the tale and unfolds the details to his interlocutors. Socrates, moreover, with the self-conscious precision characteristic of a Platonic persona, even explains his reasons for contradicting the famous Aeschylus, countering the authority of the great tragedian with his references to the evidence of the rites. I find this passage fascinating because of what it reveals about the way the Greeks handled myth – not as canonical formulations of religious dogma but as a contest of competing authorities vying to provide an explanation.