Chapter 5 The Beginnings of Rhetorical Myth in Ancient Greece

Page 128 →Near the city of Thessaloniki, in the principality of Derveni, a papyrus was discovered in mutilus in the remains of a funeral pyre in 1962 (Figure 12). Now known as the Derveni papyrus, it dates to approximately 355 bce. The papyrus is currently on display in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki in a hermetically controlled environment. In the wake of its discovery, there was a flurry of scholarship to establish its intellectual provenance, systematic connections to Presocratic thought, and authorship. Though it has been little discussed in rhetorical studies, the Derveni papyrus is cited by scholars for its connection to the sophists and Orphic theogony (Graf, 2014; Santamaria, 2019). According to Mark Edwards (1991), “Among the Presocratics, only Gorgias has left us works of comparable length; and Gorgias is the harbinger of an age in which the war between philosophy and rhetoric rendered both camps deaf to the authority of myth” (p. 202). Edwards thus aptly pointed out that the foundational papyrus is a text in which myth, philosophy, and rhetoric were attenuated prior to Platonic thought. It bears scrutiny regarding theories of language, the gods, and early philosophical considerations prefiguring the theories of myth and rhetoric ultimately culminating in Isocratean and Platonic rhetorical theory.

The Derveni papyrus is a cipher not only because of its fragmentary state but also because of the diverse topics that it addresses. The most relevant topic related to this study is a treatment of the theogony of the Greek gods that appears to be Orphic. However, its implications extend well beyond Orphism and illuminate pre-Socratic culture and its formative relationship to rhetorical myth. According to Themistius, Orphic myth held that “Orpheus tamed the whole nature and … wild beasts and eradicated and tamed the bestial element in the souls” (Penella, 2000, pp. 185–186). As Lebedev (2019) summarized, Orpheus was a “culture hero who taught the art of agriculture to all nations of οἰκουμένη, and in turn, development triggered the transition to sedentary life, the rise of civilization, the emergence of laws and justice, etc.” (p. 511). This strain of Orphism’s connection to cultural heroes as formative to the dissemination of rhetorical culture is increasingly important in future developments of rhetorical myth. Plato’s Theuth, for example, “a god or godlike man” taught the art of writing to humans, while Isocrates, by contrast, would eventually attribute the civilizing power of rhetoric to the numinous power of logos itself. Eventually, Cicero’s (1949) De Inventione contained an account of a similar role of the first orator, who brought the formative civilizing art of rhetoric to humans.

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The Derveni papyrus contains a commentary on an Orphic poem that explains how and why Orpheus named each of the gods. Edwards (1991) explained that the Derveni author “writing only a little after the heyday of the sophists” employs “two devices” to explain the Orphic theogony: etymology and analogy (p. 209). Thus, the Derveni papyrus illustrates that the mythic tradition of expressing rhetorically theoretical notions by analogy was well underway in pre-Socratic thought. Lebedev (2019) explained that in the papyrus, “Orpheus used existing words” but “gave them unusual meaning” through metaphors, more specifically, a species of analog (p. 16). Lebedev (2019) pointed out that prior to the text, “Μεταφορά in a rhetorical sense is not attested before Isocrates and Aristotle” (pp. 16–17). Scholars have noted that the sophists were deeply interested in ὀρθοέπεια (orthopoeia) or the propriety of naming (Classen, 1829, pp. 230–231) and that Plato’s (1926a) Cratylus may have been dialogically responsive to this conceit (Lebedev, 2019, p. 508).

Page 130 →One section of the Derveni papyrus illustrates the early sophistic relationship of orthopoeia to myth. It offers one intriguing statement about language and the gods: “(Zeus) existed before he was named; then he was named. For Air was pre-existent even before those things which now exist were put together and he will always exist: for he did not come to be, but existed … but he was thought to have been ‘born’ because he was named ‘Zeus’ as if he had not existed before” (XVII.1–5). Derveni’s author presents a set of analogies to explain the inherent power of the word ascribed to a being. The papyrus serves as a commentary on the Orphic mysteries and myths to explain how language invests “the names of gods and elements with an occult significance” and was possible to those “who apprehend the likeness between the attributes of these beings and those of mind” (Edwards, 1991, p. 210). To this early sophist, the gods thereby possessed a conceptual being distinct from material presence. However, implicitly, their conceptual existence preceded the act of naming. Thus, it seems the Derveni author allowed for an ontology of the gods but suggested the gods could essentially be “born” again to human minds through language. Arguably, this formative notion led Isocrates to characterize rhetoric as possessing a “life” and existence as logos before it was named “rhetorike.” In effect, Isocrates’s “Hymn to Logos” may have been a rejection of Orphic impieties. Lebedev (2019) has pointed out that the Derveni commentator “seems to believe that when something is named ἀπὸ τοῦ ἔργου, its name accords with nature or reality” (p. 18). Isocrates’s reaction to the Derveni commentator, and the Orphics generally, could be explained by his apparent belief in the logos. The Derveni commentator seemed to believe human reality and the divine being of the gods were distinct from the Heraclitean flux of the logos (Lebedev, 2019, p. 585). This may have been contrary to Isocrates’s position; but given that his speech Busiris was offered unseriously, his true position is indeterminate. In either case, the earliest articulation in writing found in ancient Greece Page 131 →established a relationship between myths of the gods, their ontology, and the power of speech.

A comprehensive interpretation of the fragments of the Derveni papyrus is likely impossible, but specific fragments suggest several provocative clues relating to the history of rhetorical myth in ancient Greece. First, the papyrus reflects an esoteric belief related to sophist thought. Second, Orphism or some aspect of the Eleusinian mysteries shaped these beliefs and suggested that some sophists believed either that the being of the gods is apprehensible through initiation to esoteric knowledge, or that the being of the gods can be known through their nominative designation. Alternatively, the ontology of things—such as gods—has an autonomous existence that can be apprehended only through language. Third, the text seems to imply an undercurrent in sophistic thought, suggesting a nexus between knowing the nature of things and speaking of them. The text suggests a belief either that a thing’s essence can be brought into conceptual existence in its most valid form by utterance or that human truth is separate from the being of things and exists only in language.

Meticulous scholarship exists concerning the probable identity of the specific sophist who might have authored the fragments. Lebedev (2019) has spent his career trying to illustrate that the likely author of the Derveni papyrus was Prodicus of Ceos. Prodicus, one of the more famous sophists, is a probable candidate for authorship, or close enough in intellectual proximity to the author of the Derveni papyrus to be sufficient for this inquiry. Prodicus is remembered throughout ancient Hellenic sources as a ferocious skeptic of religious matters. Lebedev laid out the case that Prodicus and the Derveni author both appeared to be “a Preplatonic Sophist and polymath; a specialist in the field of the ‘correctness of names’ (ὀρθότης τῶν ὀνομάτων); adept in functionalist semantics in his theory of naming (which is theoretically connected with his general utilitarianism); well-versed in rhetorics and physical science, in that he follows Archelaus’s version of Anaxagorean physics; deeply interested in Kulturgeschichte and the origin of religion and language” (p. 506). This serves as a sufficient link and introduction to a further use of myth in the rhetoric of Prodicus. Whether Lebedev is correct that Prodicus was the true author of the papyrus or not, he attributes the Derveni authorship to Prodicus with extraordinary proof sufficient to an extraordinary claim. Moreover, Prodicus is the most notable early sophist who employed mythic exempla in the epideictic genre.

Heinrichs (1984) has outlined the specific cultural circumstances at work in the time of Prodicus that led to his reputation as a radical skeptic. Heinrichs Page 132 →(1975) has summarized the religious syncretism that arose before the time of Prodicus, when “gods traditionally recognized as saviors and wonder workers increased their beneficial activities” and eastern—mainly Egyptian—cults began to hold sway, particularly in the case of Serapis and Isis (p. 153; see also Heinrichs, 1984; Vidman, 1981, pp. 121–124). Egyptian influence introduced cults to Greece, where cultural heroes with godlike powers began to gather adherents, most notably Dionysiac cults. Images of Isis and Serapis have been unearthed in both northern and southern Greece (Figure 13). Egyptian mythic paradigms likely became more widely known during the sophistic period. In this period, certain sophists—particularly Prodicus—were noted for their agnosticism or “atheism,” a charge that Heinrichs points out is a grave oversimplification of their perspective (p. 140).

Opinions on the true meaning of “atheistic” statements attributed to Prodicus vary, but Vassallo (2018) has explained that the Herculaneum fragments (notably in the Herculaneum Fragments, 1428) and other texts illustrate that Prodicus posited a twofold theory on the origins of religion. He first theorized humans moved from deifying fetishes to natural forces and persons that benefited them, or in Vassallo’s words “men deified all that was useful to their life and sustenance (τὰ τρέφοντα καὶ ὠ|φελοῦντα)” and later “they worshipped the discoverers (τοὺ[ς εὑρ]όντας) of things indispensable to human life” (p. 160). Heinrich has summarized that Prodicus was the first known Hellenic thinker to theorize that gods became gods owing to their status as “mortal benefactors of mankind who promoted inventions that improved the living conditions of early men” (p. 150). Thus, much like the Derveni papyrus suggested that humans acted to name the gods and make their material essence useful to humans through language, Prodicus would argue that rhetoric had a human progenitor as a cultural hero independent of the gods. Prodicus was characteristic of a sophism that foregrounded “excellence in man as well as in nature” as a hallmark of sophistic utilitarianism (Heinrich, 1975, p. 112). Prodicus’s “anthropocentric attitude” displaced an awe for “the sheer tremendum of the supernatural” (p. 112). A human innovator as the origin of rhetoric, in place of a divine origin, would have a sustained tradition in rhetorical myth thereafter.

The behavior attributed to the gods was frequently anthropomorphic in Greek poetry related to myth. The nature and behavior of the gods were accorded human qualities in the hands of particular poets and sophists. Sophists used both mythical humans and demi-humans as tropes and rhetorical exempla. Sophist oratory, therefore, employed mythic cultural heroes, or villains in the case of Isocrates’s Busiris or Gorgias’s Helen. These mortal (or demi-mortal) exempla became persuasive tools or exciting characters in orations of display to personify virtuous and contemptible conduct and thereby move an audience, often against its cultural presumptions. Cultural figures universally condemned were praised and others vilified as part of oratorical and, some have argued, promotional spectacles for sophistic teaching. Prodicus used the heroic figure of Herakles for one famous speech.

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In “The Choice of Heracles” by Prodicus, the exemplar is given a choice by female personifications of Virtue and Vice. Xenophon recounts the significant details of the speech, though he suggests his recollection is a pale imitation of Prodicus’s original oration. In the speech, Heracles learns the virtue of striving for arête to achieve a species of eudaimonia from the figure of Virtue, who describes herself as “a companion of the gods” (Sprague, 2001, p. 81). Abstract concepts, in the form of Vice and Virtue, are indeed personified in the speech, but the gods are conspicuously absent; Heracles is an exemplar who ultimately makes a wise choice. Sansone noted that this speech was likely one of a “performance of an epideixis before a popular audience” intended “to induce potential customers to pay for the more advanced training” (Sansone, 2004, p. 140). The Page 134 →personification of Virtue states that she will not provide—perhaps in distinction to Vice—false promises to Heracles but provide ἀληθείας (aletheios)—“to truthfully disclose to you the face of reality as the gods themselves ordained it” (Sprague, 2001, p. 81). If this was the phrasing of Prodicus and not merely the imaginative reconstruction of Xenophon, it warrants a more nuanced view of Prodicus’s “atheism,” but it likewise suggests a categorical ontology in sophistic myth that was a radical departure from its historical antecedents. Prodicus’s departure from conventional Hellenic theological dogma was exceptional, and Prodicus himself was influential. According to Papillon (2004), ancient sources suggest that Isocrates and other luminaries had occasion to attend lectures by Prodicus (p. 4). Despite his radical theology, in Phaedrus even Plato speaks approvingly of Prodicus (possibly in jest; p. 267b).

The next major integration of myth into the rhetorical tradition finds its earliest expression in Plato and Isocrates, who were possibly indebted to both Prodicus and Protagoras. They emerge in the form of ancient arguments from prehistory and are known in philological parlance as Kulturgeschichte accounts (Cole 1967, 3). They relate to the origin, development, and priority of ars or scientia and offer mythic or historical scenarios that are subordinate to a larger argument. Greek and Roman Kulturgeschichte accounts seem to comprise two major typological groupings. Mythic Kulturgeschichte accounts assert the possibility that early cities were founded by mythological figures or from whom technology was a “gift” to humans. Others cite anthropological or logical developments based on evidentiary standards of their time, though they are likewise speculative. Ancient philosophers and rhetoricians frequently characterized human history with relative consistency as a progressive development from prehistoric savagery to a state of civilization. They used structurally similar but paradigmatically differing accounts that prioritized certain pivotal events or forms of knowledge. Even conventional historians like Diodorus Siculus, Diogenes Laertius, and Xenophanes of Colophon tell no single uniform narrative about the development of the first cities. Thomas Cole has made a systematic accounting of various narratives in antiquity that seem philosophically or historically aimed at establishing a factual chronology of prehistoric human development (1991a, pp. 15–23).

Cole (1991a) suggested that such accounts were intended as rhetorical, not factual, in nature. In contrast to narratives with historical accuracy in mind, Page 135 →many Kulturgeschichte narratives of prehistory served as propaedeutic or epideictic arguments. Examples of Kulturgeschichte arguments relating to prehistory occur earliest in Plato’s (1921) Protagoras and Isocrates’s Busiris but later occur in Cicero’s (1949) De Inventione (I), and Vitruvius De Architectura (II). Cole noted that such treatments would become common in the ancient world and provided a nonexhaustive list of those lost and extant, including Ephorus, Heraclides Ponticus, Theophrastus, and Strato of Lampsacus (p. 5). Other authors discussed by Cole (1991a) but not germane to this inquiry are Posidinius, Democritus (predating Plato and Isocrates, but lost), and Epicurus (pp. 7–10). Most of them addressed the role of rudimentary inventions before the rise of cities but without reference to myth (p. 5). It is sufficient to adopt Cole’s summary in lieu of an exhaustive accounting when he stated that such narratives “seem to have been a part of the stock in trade of every rhetorician and philosopher and could be introduced into a great diversity of contexts in support of varied and often contradictory conclusions” (p. 8). Cole noted that “in epideictic passages, it was common to portray the object of one’s praise as somehow intimately associated with the laborious process which led from savagery to civilization” (p. 6). Plato’s (1921) Protagoras myth may have inspired Isocrates to write Busiris, and it may likewise have been written in reaction to Prodicus; but both pieces are evidence of the way myth and rhetoric intersected. Both Plato and Isocrates’s Kulturgeschichte myths were reactions to sophistic uses of myth, but Isocrates is ideal as an intersectional figure because his narrative seems a reaction to both the Sophists and Plato.

Prodicus may (or may not) have had a direct or indirect instructive influence on the next generation of important rhetoricians in Hellenic culture. But it is clear that Prodicus influenced Isocrates in his treatment of myth. Likewise, the influence of Egyptian culture, at least by reputation, is evident in his epideictic speech Busiris, in which Isocrates directly addresses the uses of myth in rhetorical practice. Papillon (1996, p. 2021) has twice analyzed the integration of myth in Isocrates, beginning with the observation that Isocrates claimed in Panathenaicus that he did not treat the mythic (μυθικός) in his earlier writings (1929, 12.1). Papillon (1996) pointed out that Isocrates perhaps used “the adjective, μυθικός … in a way different from the noun μῦθος” (p. 10). Like Prodicus, Isocrates uses mythic figures such as Heracles as behavioral exempla in letters such as To Philip, but in Busiris he panegyrically praises an enemy of Heracles: the Egyptian tyrant Busiris. But there is more to Busiris than a speech of epideictic performance, and commentators such as Livingstone (2001) believe its implications should be studied more closely.

Page 136 →As Papillon (1996) aptly pointed out, Isocrates “specifically faults the author Polycrates for a poor treatment of the Busiris myth” (p. 18). However, Thomas Blank (2013) has observed that “a serious intention can, of course, be found in Isocrates’ claim to instruct” regarding the proper form of rhetorical education (p. 17, citing Busiris, 11.1–3). The didactic purpose (§43–44) is arguably a form of discourse Papillon (2001) has defined as “hypodeictic.” Blank explained that Busiris is not “a critique of the use of myth itself” but a preceptive demonstration of how myth might be used for persuasive ends (p. 17). Isocrates—perhaps playfully—creates an adversarial or competitive approach with another author to foreground “his own example of how the subject should be treated” (p. 18). Busiris, then, presents a rhetoric of myth in panegyric displays. However, Papillon asserted that the primary reason for the composition is to instruct others in the manner “to treat a myth in a way that is useful” (p. 18). Isocrates’s speech operates in multiple contexts, regarding both the relation of rhetoric to Hellenic culture and its mythological principles. The speech is a reaction to Prodicus’s anthropocentric view of the gods and the use of mythological narratives concerning the gods in rhetorical practice. Isocrates subjects the mythic figure of Busiris to praise, sharing the same apparent aim as Polycrates, whom he accuses of arguments “which are fitting to revilers” (11.33).

Additionally, Isocrates critiques using exemplary models in the form of the gods themselves in Greek rhetoric. He continues that it is to those who exemplified piety toward the gods who “brought it about that we in our relations to one another are not altogether like wild beasts” (Busiris, 11.25). However, most notably, Isocrates faults Polycrates for attributing “the power of the gods” to Busiris (11.32). Ultimately, Isocrates accuses Polycrates of the crimes of certain poets—likely meaning the Orphics—who “have related about the gods themselves tales more outrageous than anyone would dare tell concerning their enemies” (11.38). Isocrates quickly points out that “Orpheus, who made a point of rehearsing these tales, died by being torn asunder” (11.39). An acceptance of such “loose tongued vilification” of the gods makes the hearer “equally guilty of impiety” as “those who recite and those who believe such lies” (11.40). Isocrates indicts poets such as Hesiod but reserves his greatest contempt for Orphic poetry for anthropomorphizing the motives and behavior of the gods. He suggests that human motives and failings do not belong to the gods, but conceptually distinct qualities. This nod to critique the mythological assumptions of Prodicus concerning the theogony of the gods should not be overlooked.

In a sense, Isocrates contrasts the Egyptian character of rhetoric represented by conceptual gods to the impious treatment of mythic beings by the Greeks. Page 137 →Isocrates is likewise careful to point out only the civic virtues that Busiris provided to Egypt. Isocrates epideictically praises the legal and social systems of Egypt in contrast to that of the Greeks: “If we should wish to adopt the laws of the Egyptians which prescribe that some must work and that the rest must protect the property of the workers, we should all possess our own goods and pass our days in happiness” (Busiris, 11.20). He attributes to the Egyptians training in philosophy and all the practical arts and even their theology, about which he states, “their worship of the gods are especially deserving of praise and admiration” (11.24). However, just as significantly, Isocrates argues a fundamental viewpoint on the nature of the gods, presumably counter to one (Prodican) strain of sophism. Isocrates states that he believes “the gods but also their offspring have no share in any wickedness, but themselves are by nature endowed with all the virtues” (ἔχοντας τὰς ἀρετὰς in the original; 11.41). A key to understanding Busiris is its stasiastic opposition to the anthropocentric theogony of the sophists. This critique is twofold: Isocrates first emphatically implies the gods have being and possess understanding, and second that they are capable of holding with them—arguably embodying or personifying—arête (ἔχοντας). Thus, his counterargument is an ontological one as well, perhaps a defense of prior conceptions of the being of gods in Egypt and their personification as abstract principles. More significantly, Isocrates satirizes his philosophical rival, Plato, for his perceived Egyptomania. Isocrates states from the outset that the speech is not offered as a serious treatment of its topic. Whether this suggests that Isocrates was sympathetic to Greek theogony and mythic traditions remains ambiguous, perhaps intentionally so.

Isocrates’s awareness of Egyptian culture and myth, and his stasiastic position about the conceptual nature of the gods, is suggested by the genre of Busiris as a panegyric of place. Pernot (1993) has acknowledged that Busiris structurally resembles a speech resembling, in structure, what Menander Rhetor would later describe as a class of epideictic speech he described as an encomium of a city. Arguably, this panegyric strategy could embrace some knowledge of the Egyptian concept of the gods and their relationship to abstract principles, such as arête. Livingstone (2001) noted that “the imaginary Egypt of Busiris” bears little resemblance to the Theuth-story of Plato, but “the list of Theuth’s discoveries includes the three elements which make up Busiris’s programme of ‘propaideutics’ ” (p. 62). Eucken (1983) also drew attention to several correspondences of detail between Critias’s introduction to the ideal Atlantean state and Busiris, “which in each text serves as a heading for a section on Egyptian intellectual training” (Livingstone, 2001, p. 66). Timaeus and Critias are the Page 138 →subject of the final chapter of this book. In any case, a real or imagined Egypt lived in the rhetorical consciousness of ancient Athens. It would recur in Greek rhetoric. Isocrates appears to react to the influx of Egyptian myth and its effect on the culture, especially the rhetorical culture, at work in his day.

Moreover, Isocrates compares an Egyptian tyrant—perhaps because the Egyptians embodied rhetorical ideals in their gods—to a fundamentally Greek cultural hero, Orpheus. Isocrates illustrates Polycrates’s mythological error by engaging in a related heresy toward Orphism (1.33). While the aim of Busiris is the same as the speech of Polycrates, it stands as a preceptual critique because Polycrates argued, “Busiris emulated the fame of Aeolus and Orpheus, yet you do not show that any of his pursuits were identical with theirs” (11.7). Livingstone (2001) pointed out that “it is not clear what the point of comparison was” that Polycrates made between Orpheus and Busiris (p. 40). However, it is significant that Isocrates “is quick to point out the divine lineage of Busiris,” distinguishing him from, and perhaps elevating him above, the human Orpheus (40). Late in the speech, Isocrates critiques Polycrates because no better example exists than Busiris to praise, because he “would be considered to have a better claim to the authorship of the institutions of Egypt” as “a son of Poseidon, a descendant of Zeus on his mother’s side” (1928, 11.29). At 11.39, Isocrates points out the fate of Orpheus himself, who was “torn apart” for his “blasphemies”; Livingstone (2001) observed that this may indeed be “a reference to the ‘Orphic’ theogonies, cosmogony-poems ascribed to Orpheus in which the god’s dynastic revolutions and their grotesque mechanism—castration, swallowing etc.—were prominent” (pp. 177–78). Recall, however, the significance of the mouth in Egyptian traditions; Isocrates reaction to these grotesqueries could be a fundamental misunderstanding—or intentional mischaracterization—of Orphic and other mythic systems. Isocrates suggests that even this horrible fate was better than what blasphemers like Orpheus may have deserved. The character of Isocrates’s praise of Busiris is pointed because Orpheus is a characteristically sophistic cultural hero.

Papillon (2001) concluded that one purpose of Busiris is to act as a didactic speech using an encomiastic display to offer rhetorical precept. However, Busiris likewise operates in the context of the mythic tradition in rhetoric. We cannot know if Polycrates was an adherent to the views of Prodicus and his anthropomorphic perspective on the theogony of the gods. It is very possible that Isocrates satirizes both Plato and the sophists in his praise of Busiris. Based on the textual record, the sheer volume of accounts of the sophists espousing an impious or heretical view of the gods might constitute a valid Page 139 →inference. Likewise, that some favored an anthropocentric explanation of the theogony of the gods is entirely possible. Such a view stood in opposition to both Greek and Egyptian theogonic conventions. Isocrates’s display in Busiris was not only to highlight his oratorical and argumentative capacities in contrast to Polycrates but to provide an argument that subverted the Orphism and impiety of the sophists. Incorporating the Egyptian mythic tradition and contrasting it with Greek theological perspectives on the gods might have been Isocrates’s attempt to take Plato’s praise of Egypt to an extreme logical conclusion. Vasunia (2001) characterized Busiris at length as a type of parody (pp. 201–207). As either a satire of Platonic and Orphic myth or a parody of other encomia, Busiris is a direct commentary, therefore, on the position of myth—and its rhetorical uses—that Isocrates held forth as contrarian to the sophistic view of myth and the Platonic implication that Egyptian institutions exceeded Hellenic institutions in any sense. Egypt and Greece had extensive contact from the time of Homer, who respected Egyptian doctors, knew about Thebes, and had heard of the Ethiopians. By the seventh century, Greek merchants were in Naucratis. In the sixth century, an inscription at Abu Simbel showed Greek mercenaries were present in Egypt. A century later, the scholar Hecataeus of Miletus visited Egypt and wrote about it (Brown, 1962, p. 258). But to Isocrates, praising Egyptian institutions as superior to Greek institutions might seem absurd.

Several inferences might be drawn from Busiris related to the history of myth in the emerging rhetorical culture of the Greeks. The manner in which Isocrates offers a preceptive comment on the propriety of myth and rhetoric in his own culture is of particular note. Isocrates comments on the relationship of myth and sophistic rhetoric in contrast to traditional Greek values. Arguably, his counsel regarding the use of myth in epideictic rhetoric should be taken no more seriously than his belief in Busiris as a cultural hero. It is doubtful that his praise of Egypt was genuine. But as Livingstone (2001) observed, the structure of Isocrates’s encomiastic treatment of Egypt is real, if not genuine, and “the Encomium of Egypt need not be associated with any climate of pro-Egyptian sentiment: it is not wholly serious and includes features such as the ‘superstition’ of animal worship which Athenians tended not to admire … In any case, interest in things Egyptian among classical Athenians seems to have been continuous, not sporadic” (p. 45). Whether significant or risible, this interest suggests the Greeks had an awareness of traditions relating to rhetoric and myths of Egypt, which would have been of particular interest to both Plato and Isocrates.

Page 140 →Busiris provides valuable insight into the issues surrounding myth and rhetoric in Isocrates’s day. It is a critique of his sophistic forebears and a dialectical engagement with his rival for the educational soul of Athens. It is quite overtly a reaction to Orphic myth and theogeny and an attempt to anthropomorphize the character of the gods. Arguably this was a direct or indirect attack on Prodicus and those sophists in his circle. Just as significantly, Isocrates’s Egyptian theme, which might even have been a disingenuous panegyric for Egypt itself, might have been directed at the apparent Egyptophilia of Plato in Republic generally and Critias particularly. A mythic narrative concerning Egypt represents such a large part of the speech that it is difficult to suggest it might be there for no reason at all. Likewise, Livingstone (2001) convincingly suggested that Busiris may have been intended as a kind of counterpoint to Plato’s (1941) myth of Theuth (from Phaedrus). Livingstone argued that Busiris is offered to carry Socrates assumptions about truth and myth to a kind of absurd conclusion. “When Phaedrus responds with bemusement to the story of Theuth and Thamous (‘Socrates, you can easily make up stories from Egypt or wherever you want,’ 275b), Socrates chides him” (p. 63). When Phaedrus suggests that Socrates perhaps fabricated the story of Theuth and claimed it was of Egyptian origin, Socrates’s reply assumes that “it does not matter whether the story comes from Egypt (or whether Socrates made it up”) and second, “it does not matter if Egypt” (a peculiar, non-Greek country) is where it comes from. All that matters is whether it expresses something true” (62). Livingstone (2001) explained that this stands in contrast to the Egypt of Busiris, “where a constitutional system resembling that of the Republic was teasingly relocated in Egypt” (p. 62). Livingstone pointed out that although “the Theuth-story clearly bears no direct relation to the imaginary Egypt of Busiris,” still, “the list of Theuth’s discoveries includes the three elements which make up Busiris’ programme of ‘propaideutics’ ” (p. 62).

Scholars have likewise found incidental connections between Busiris and the dialogues Timaeus and Critias. Those connections are suggestive that Busiris was responsive to incidental details relating to both Egypt and Atlantis (Morgan, 1998). Thus, not only does Isocrates suggest an alternative mythic figure to Theuth for the origin of propaideutics, but an alternative location as the subject of his panegyric of place: Egypt. Eucken (1983) suggested that Critias’s discourse in the Timaeus, along with its incomplete continuation in the Critias, serves as a reaction to the collective themes presented in Isocrates’s works Busiris and Panegyricus (pp. 208–210). Pohlenz (1913) likewise observed parallels between other sections incidental to the Republic’s description of Egypt Page 141 →and the Busiris (p. 22). Livingstone (2001) saw parallels between the Egyptians of Busiris and the Atlanteans of Critias, in that “The people of Atlantis are, like Isocrates’ Busiris, offspring of Poseidon and a human mother” (p. 69). In Livingstone’s view, “Isocrates depreciates a Platonic constitution by relocating it in a barbarian country in the distant past, and by making it the work of Busiris, traditionally a sinister tyrant. The picture he gives of this constitution—static, regimented, founded on superstition and not distinguished by military achievement—is in sharp contrast with authentic Isocratean praise of a state, as represented by Panegyricus: Athens is creative, versatile, dependent on the individual of her citizens, and her history is a catalogue of military successes” (p. 69). Whether Isocrates’s Busiris constituted a satirical retort to both the sophistic and Orphic elements of Greek thought or constitutes a similar reaction to Plato’s Phaedrus and Critias, Busiris is an excellent transitional point between sophistic mythic rhetorical perspectives and Platonic dialogues composed at the same time, as it seems representative of Greek consciousness buffeted by both. Myth, rhetoric, and the persistent presence of an Egypt, real or imagined, in Greek consciousness continued with Plato.

A philosophical and rhetorical preoccupation with rhetorical myth was marked in Plato to a much greater degree than Isocrates. Scholars have given great attention to the myth of Theuth in Phaedrus, but it was not the only rhetorical myth recounted in Plato. Plato cites Protagoras to recount an originary myth strongly concerned with rhetoric. Protagoras of Abdera has been described as the first thinker who “consciously elaborated theories of culture as distinct from nature” (Phillips, 1964, p. 172). Plato’s recounting of the myth of Prometheus through the character of Protagoras begs the question of the authenticity of its paradigmatic details. Like the indeterminate nature of the influence of Prodicus on Isocrates, it is unclear how authentically Plato represents the Kulturgeschichte myth of Protagoras. But as Thomas Cole (1991a) concluded, “However one wishes to assess Plato’s share in the creation of the Protagoras myth, it is reasonable to assume a Sophistic origin for the basic idea which accounts for its inclusion in the dialogue” (p. 8). Plato’s recounting may represent the major syntagmatic details of the narrative, which makes it an early fabula regarding the prehistoric condition of human society and its adoption of rhetoric, however implicitly. In the Promethean myth, Prometheus and Epimetheus equip the animals with differing talents and means Page 142 →for survival, but Prometheus finds that only humans were left unclothed, without a home, and unarmed (Plato, Protagoras, p. 320d-e). “Prometheus, in his perplexity as to what preservation he could devise for man, stole from Hephaestus and Athena wisdom in the arts” (p. 321c) and, famously, fire (p. 321d). As a result, humans were the only creature “enabled by his skill to articulate speech and words” as well as other institutions and technology but lived separately and without cities (p. 322a). Upon gathering together to form cities, they still injured each other because they had no civic art until Zeus endowed them with a sense of justice and respect for one another (p. 322b–c). This account is intriguing because it illustrates the combination of some sophist tradition and a Platonic account more sympathetic to myth. But just as significantly, in Plato’s Protagoras, it is Hermes who acts as the figure distributing these gifts to humans. This is significant because, as Yona points out “By the beginning of the seventh century bc, then, Hermes appears to have been connected, at least in some capacity, with clever speech” and was analogical to Thoth, making the tale of Protagoras a flashpoint for the history of rhetorical myth in the centuries after 335 ad and therefore perhaps best left to discuss as a central preface to those centuries (2015, p. 367). It is particularly illuminating if one contrasts it to a similar account that appears in Diodorus Siculus—attributed by some to Protagoras—which also illustrates a mythic nexus between Plato and his sophist predecessors.

Diodorus’s (1989) account states that the earliest humans lived as simple food-gatherers in small groups. Facing attacks from wild animals, they learned to cooperate extensively and began to recognize one another’s characteristics. Initially, the sounds they made were unintelligible and indistinct, but over time, they developed articulate speech and agreed on symbols for various things. As these groups formed randomly around the world, the first languages were all different. One passage bears particular scrutiny:

though the sounds which they made were at first unintelligible and indistinct, yet gradually they came to give articulation to their speech, and by agreeing with one another upon symbols for each thing which presented itself to them, made known among themselves the significance which was to be attached to each term (Library, 1.8.3) … not all men had the same language, inasmuch as every group organized the elements of its speech by mere chance. This is the explanation of the present existence of every conceivable kind of language, and, furthermore, out of these first groups to be formed came all the original nations of the world … (1.8.3–4)

Page 143 →Upon discovering fire and other useful things, the arts and conveniences of social life slowly emerged. Necessity became their teacher, providing appropriate guidance to humanity. Some scholars have attributed the origin of the passage to a lost work by Protagoras (Phillips, 1964, p. 173). If this is the case, it first illustrates Plato’s propensity to impose mythic narrative on otherwise nonmythic accounts; there is no evidence in this account of figures such as Prometheus or divine intervention. Second, it illustrates that Plato employs rhetoric in a very specific way to convey his protreptic arguments. The character of Protagoras offers the myth of Prometheus to build an analogical relationship by way of similarity to the value of his own teaching. The narrative of Diodorus, however, argues that the development of civilization and the arts had developmental and causative properties directly related to human nature.

But it is of note that Diodorus (1989)—though outside the temporal scope of this history—makes note of a second originary tradition for humanity that likewise acknowledges Thoth. In his secondary argument of human origins, the gods intervened in the animal nature of humans in a gradual process of substituting various parts of their nature with other things. Perhaps most notable was the replacement of their indiscriminate appetite (including cannibalism) for herbivorous grains by Isis (Library, 1.15.1). However, one pivotal event dependent on part-whole expressions is attributed to “the Egyptian Hermes” (1.16.1).¹ It is pivotal because it is the last of the divine interventions in human nature mentioned by Diodorus and one consistent with his account of the emergence of language. Diodorus includes one of the numerous contributions of the Egyptian Hermes as endowing humans with the capacity to expand their innate ability to articulate with hermeneia (ἑρμηνεία), though not hermeneutic in the interpretive sense (1.16.1). Rather, Diodorus suggests that Thoth endowed humans with the capacity for amplification and explanation of complex thoughts, and more specifically, the Greeks learned this art of “expounding their thoughts” from him (καὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας διδάξαι τοῦτον τὰ περὶ τὴν ἑρμηνείαν) (1.8.3). This final gift was one part of knowledge that comprised the whole of distinguishing characteristics of humans from animals. Hermes’s endowment of language to humans was synecdochal, as in his first originary account, the whole of human conversational discourse (διάλεκτον) was articulated into more specific parts (διαρθρωθῆναι; 1.1.16.). Nameless things were named specifically (ἀνωνύμων τυχεῖν προσηγορία), moving from a whole without categorical parts to specific semantic units (1.1.16). The invention of letters followed this. The Hermetic articulation of language is not received suddenly but through a gradual substitution of parts, representing a synecdochal Page 144 →relationship where individual capacities are viewed as fragments of holistic human nature.

Egypt itself is identified as the home of a rhetorical myth distinct from Protagoras’s originary narrative in Plato. However, unlike the reference to Egypt as a solitary oratorical conceit in Busiris, Plato often revisits Egypt and its myths throughout his dialogues. The most famous of these studied by rhetoricians occurs in Phaedrus in the form of an anomalous visit from the subject of a previous chapter—Thoth. Plato’s preoccupation was, likewise, not merely theologcal but contrastively rhetorical and particularly rhetorical in its intersection with the highly literate culture of Egypt. Although Plato employed myths in circulation in ancient Greece, he was equally famous for mythologizing: creating analogical explanations of conceptual skema to explain philosophical principles. Plato’s rhetorical use of myth is well-known and so extensive that a complete accounting of all the dialogues would be redundant. His choice for one such act of automythologizing on the topic of rhetoric occurs in Phaedrus and is the first of two extremely telling myths he employs about the Greek reception of far older rhetorical traditions. Plato’s reference to the deity Thoth is at odds with the sophistic transmission of the mythic rhetorical tradition to ancient Greece. This connection exists partially in the way Plato received and interpreted the role of Thoth in Egyptian society, as well as Thoth’s role in rhetorical theory. But Plato’s use of mythic analogy to convey a protreptic argument itself illustrates connections to more ancient rhetorical myths and their uses. Thoth’s reception by Plato was not a full or even an authentic accounting of Thoth’s role as a personification of rhetoric in Egypt, of course. Plato seemed to portray Thoth wholly as preoccupied with the Egyptian writing system, which is a critique not of writing itself, but mediation between humans and knowledge of true rhetoric (see, e.g., Ramsey, 2022).

I have previously discussed Plato’s possible exposure to the rhetorical traditions of Egyptian myth, but a recitation thereof bears repeating here; I limit similar observations only as is necessary to advance this significantly differing argument (see, e.g., Ramsey, 2023). Plato tells the story of the Theuth as the mythic inventor of writing. Plato (1914) begins: “I heard, then, that at Naucratis,² in Egypt, was one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth” (Θεύθ; p. 274c). Theuth presents the invention of writing to the god Thamus, known to Egyptians as Ammon (Ra or Re); Thamus-Ra himself calls Thoth “the father of letters” (πατὴρ ὢν γραμμάτων; p. 275a). Though seemingly anomalous in his dialogues, Plato’s understanding of Egyptian philosophy was likely far more Page 145 →intimate than modern scholarship suggests. While remote in time from Plato’s own life, the later accounts seem entirely too unanimous and embroidered with consistent detail to be wholly ignored.³ Plato’s choice to portray Thoth as exemplum as the scribe of the Gods and father of letters could be intentional based on contextual clues from Egyptian culture. These texts were circulating, evidenced in the demotic records, in Plato’s lifetime. In the Egyptian textual corpus, there is no evidence of any narrative similar to the one concerning Thoth in Phaedrus. Perhaps The Book of Thoth and The Tale of Setne may have existed in Greek, as both exist in demotic in later papyri. It is arguable that the incident to which Plato refers may have existed in the lost early sections of Setne. They are both mythical texts from which Plato might have learned of Thoth if he had not visited Egypt in person.

Thoth appears in Plato’s (1925) Philebus as well as Phaedrus (1914). Philebus mentions that, “When someone, whether god or godlike man,—there is an Egyptian story that his name was Theuth—observed that sound was infinite, he was the first to notice that the vowel sounds in that infinity were not one, but many, and again that there were other elements which were not vowels but did have a sonant quality” (18b). The exemplum of Theuth in Phaedrus is frequently interpreted as an overt critique of writing, which to Plato was an unnecessarily mediated mode of true rhetoric (275b). Ancient Greek culture regarded Thoth as an aspect or version of their god Hermes (see, e.g., Bortolani, 2019); but it is clear from Plato’s contextual cues in Phaedrus that he refers to a specifically Egyptian deity of great antiquity and does not mention Hermes at all in the dialogue. The puzzling choice of exempla to advance Socrates’s argument in the dialogue is even remarked on by Phaedrus, who observes: “Socrates, you easily make up stories of Egypt or any country you please” (Phaedrus, 275b). In response, Socrates acknowledges that the myth may or not be from Egypt at all: “To you, perhaps, it makes a difference who the speaker is and where he comes from, for you do not consider only whether his words are true or not” (275c). Socrates states that, like the most ancient prophetic utterances, the myth is of great antiquity (275b). But in the context of an organic reading of the whole of the Phaedrus, it must be considered that the exemplum of Theuth is offered in response to Phaedrus’s question about the speech of Lysias, which happens to be in writing.

Plato’s Theuth is narrowly used to make an epistemological argument; this does not mean Plato did not possess a more comprehensive understanding of Thoth’s nature in an Egyptian context. Consider the way that Plato deploys a rhetorical god to make a rhetorical argument, however inauthentic the portrayal Page 146 →of the god; consider further that Phaedrus himself points out the inauthenticity of Socrates’s tale. Plato’s impression of Thoth is for epistemic ends, which does not authentically portray Thoth’s comprehensively ontological nature, either in Egyptian philosophy or in their rhetorical theory more specifically. His impression seems tellingly based on sources likely in circulation in his day, as they have been found in late demotic manuscript form in circulation after his death, possibly based on a part of the Tale of Setne now lost to us. If Plato’s knowledge of Thoth came from his (probable) presence in Egypt after the death of Socrates or from oral or textual sources circulating in Greece, then they might derive from the texts or textual precursors recorded in demotic manuscripts we currently possess. Plato’s likely understanding of the nature of Thoth expressed in Phaedrus becomes somewhat understandable as inaccurate: yet the presence of Egypt in Plato’s dialogues represents a thread, however fine, of the mythic rhetorical tradition. The thread of mythic rhetorical modes is one part of a continuum of influence dating back to Nisaba and Seshat’s appearance in 2650 bce, and leads, however indirectly, to ancient Athenian rhetorical theory. There is a frequent recurrence of references to Egypt in Plato’s work. These include a wry remark regarding Socrates’s designs for the Ideal state consistently resembling those of Egypt in Republic, a reference to hieroglyphic recordation in Laws, to the appearance of Thoth in Phaedrus and Philebus, or the interlocutory character of the Egyptian Priest in Timaeus. The Egyptians have a remarkably recurring conceptual presence in Plato’s thought and dialogues.⁴

To Plato, a wholly human and direct means of discovering knowledge would be antithetical to a worldview that values the requirement of a liminal divinity such as Thoth, who necessarily mediates between the human world and the divine. Perhaps Plato viewed Thoth reductively as akin to a Graeco-Roman divinity; but most certainly, he viewed his power as epistemic. Plato’s exception to such an idea would be qualified because he conceded the possibility of knowledge through the divinities on other occasions. Plato addresses it very explicitly in the Seventh Letter, which not coincidentally contains Plato’s final statement on writing. When Plato speaks of Dion’s death and the nature of immortality in the Seventh Letter, he states: “We must always truly believe the old and sacred documents which reveal (μηνύουσιν) that the soul is immortal” (335a).

No less, Plato uses myths—and myths of an Egyptian character, at least nominally—in Phaedrus and Timaeus-Critias. He makes extensive reference to Egyptian culture in other dialogues, most notably multiple dialogues in Republic. Moreover, both the myths of Thoth and the Platonic Theuth are fundamentally rhetorical. Suppose Plato did not perceive the nuance present in Page 147 →Thoth’s nature that distinguished his role as purely epistemological rather than ontological. In that case, it may be that he did so because this served his own rhetorical ends. His rhetorical ends in the Theuth episode in Phaedrus, as a critique of mediated knowledge, was an appropriation of mythic exempla for a specific purpose and not to provide a portrayal of Thoth reflecting cultural verisimilitude true to Egyptian traditions. Ironically, Plato would soon articulate a theory of myth in Timaeus-Critias related to employing myth in relation to truth. Part of this theory of rhetorical myth is apparent in the objection of Phaedrus to the Theuth myth in Phaedrus.

After Plato (1914) tells the myth of Theuth, Phaedrus observes: “Socrates, you easily make up stories of Egypt or any country you please” (Phaedrus, 275b). In response, Socrates acknowledges that the myth may or not be from Egypt at all, replying “to you, perhaps, it makes a difference who the speaker is and where he comes from, for you do not consider only whether his words are true or not” (275c). In his response, Plato very overtly responds that the validity of mythic expressions is their value as truth-expressions. Plato implies that myths can function in some manner that conveys true propositions that do not on their face express those propositions. They therefore convey truth in some other manner that has a rhetorical function. This is a pivotal statement in the history of Greek rhetoric: Plato, in one rejoinder, asserts the presence of true doctrinal statements concerning rhetoric is possible through myth. Likewise, he frames the nature of mythic truth propositions as rhetorical in their means of transmission. These truth propositions also exist independent of their authorial origin, cultural origin, age, or other provenance. In acknowledging that mythic statements may not require verisimilitude to convey truth, Plato lays the framework for later articulations of rhetorical myth discussed in Chapter 5: that myths are a tropic skema of a logos. As we shall see, he likewise associates this rhetorical disposition of myth with Egyptian culture’s mythmaking. Phaedrus, therefore, is the first assertion by Plato that myths are not incompatible with truth, which he expands upon in greater detail in Timaeus. If the aim of “true” rhetoric in Platonic thought is oriented to truth, then Plato confirms that myth is one viable means to persuade. The myth of Theuth and its attendant exchanges, therefore, constitutes a hypodeictic rhetorical myth.

The implications of Plato’s statement are quite complex in this conversational exchange where Phaedrus states: “They used to say, my friend, that the words of the oak in the holy place of Zeus at Dodona were the first prophetic utterances. The people of that time … were content in their simplicity to hear Page 148 →an oak or a rock, provided only it spoke the truth” (Phaedrus, 25a–c). This is the central rhetorical precept of the entire Theuth-Thamus exchange on the relation of myth and truth. Socrates’s rebuke is laden with significance as the received theory of rhetorical myth; the contention that myths could convey truth propositions as analogical metaphors seems to have been first articulated here by Plato. Plato rejects the idea of authorial validation for truth propositions and very overtly suggests that human knowledge of truth might be inherently numinous and dispersed. The exchange further suggests that conceptual truth can come to us from signs in the natural world as readily as myth. Most significant, this affirms that myths possess analogical power that is a form of intergenerational rhetoric. By creating this symmetry between supernatural signs, natural signs, and mythic narratives, Plato asserts a way of knowing whose validity exists in a broad range of signs. From such signs—most notably myth—in which truth propositions may be evident, he rejects the idea of certain forms of symbolic mediation. To illustrate why this is important in the context of rhetorical myth, look back to Sumer. In Sumer, to enter Nisaba’s House of Wisdom was to thereby enter into a cosmic communion with unlimited semiosis with archival knowledge and the future history of oneself. Though metaphorically astrological in nature, she consulted her wisdom on a blue tablet of stars, and it was from these natural signs that one might divine future action or past fact. “Wisdom” in Sumer derived from mediated access to signs. Likewise, in Thoth’s mythological narrative, knowledge was necessarily mediated to become truth by way of Thoth’s relational being. Thoth’s being was, in this aspect too, fundamentally rhetorical in nature.

By contrast, Plato implies that knowledge might derive from innate human perceptions of natural, metaphorical or mythological signs. In contrast to Phaedrus’s attempt to reference authoritative written knowledge, Plato implies that ancient systems of knowing, being more direct, were in fact legitimate means to perceive truth propositions. That those means themselves might be conveyed by means of nondiscursive signs is at least an implicit acknowledgment of Sumerian and Egyptian rhetorical traditions. Plato attempts to synthesize an older cosmos of rhetorical knowledge by reference to its epistemological ways of knowing as a laconic rejoinder. He tacitly identifies the many ways of knowing from the ancient past. He signals, in the myth of Theuth, to the traditions of Egypt as further confirmation of this. The goal of rhetoric, then, was to know and seek truth propositions wherever they might be most directly known according to their dispersed and numinous nature. Plato’s narrative of Thoth, as I have previously argued, is not so much a critique of writing as an Page 149 →attempt to synthesize a long and deep philosophical and rhetorical tradition of epistemology in which direct revelatory knowledge remains possible.

Plato suggests that through nondiscursive knowledge of the truth, a rhetor can apply himself to artfully conveying truth propositions, not merely appearing to have wisdom. That wisdom precedes eloquence is a rhetorical proposition with long and deep roots in the ancient world, often expressed in the mythic assumptions of the cultural predecessors of ancient Greece. In Sumer, rhetors like Enmerkar create eloquence only predicated on the admission to wisdom’s house through Nisaba. In Egypt, rhetors gain access to Thoth’s wisdom or, in the case of Naneferkaptah, speak with consequences that defy the orderly relational ontology implicit in rhetoric itself. Phaedrus, by contrast, nearly commits error by reference to a false practice that precedes speech. The writing he brings to Socrates is subject to critique because it isn’t predicated on true knowledge. Rather, semiotic inferences are predicated on the inauthentic practices and thoughts of others. Socrates’s critique is thereby epistemic. Plato attempts to practice in his writing precisely what he theorizes: he employs a mythic analogy to illustrate a protreptic proposition. Plato harmonizes the use of myth and rhetoric in Phaedrus to teach a lesson about rhetoric itself.

Plato uses several metaphors elsewhere in his dialogues related to human knowledge that reify the implications of the exchange between Phaedrus and Socrates. The image of birds and netting of birds is very ancient and is very evident in Sumerian and Egyptian metaphors: Enmerkar creates a net to gather seeds together in one challenge with the aid of Nisaba; The Book of Thoth presents an image of Thoth as a fowler and the birds he gathers are the signs or letters. In Theaetetus Plato (1924) describes memory as an aviary. Plato uses an analogical exemplum, wherein birds represent units of knowledge (197c). Socrates first asks Theaetetus to imagine that a person with knowledge is like a fowler who catches birds but who “should arrange an aviary at home and keep them in it” so that “in each soul an aviary stocked with all sorts of birds” (197c). However, the fowler is unable to know which bird is true or false knowledge. That Thoth’s nature was fundamentally ontological is a nuance that was so embedded in Egyptian culture that an external Attic observer might not fully grasp it. Alternatively, as Plato (half) concedes to Phaedrus, the myth of Theuth he offers is to convey a more important truth about rhetoric that is not, and was never, intended to represent the Egyptian god with verisimilitude. Thus, even in the Thirtieth Dynasty, Thoth fulfilled his rhetorical function as the lord of the crossroads in the writings of Plato, even on the road from Hermopolis to Athens.

Page 150 →In summary, Plato’s Hellenization of Thoth as an exemplar was something of an inversion of Thoth’s original relational nature, because Plato uses the myth of Theuth to express the relationship of individual humans to the knowledge of the Forms, particularly in a rhetorical context. In ancient Egypt, however, Thoth represented the role of rhetoric, as well as its nature, based on its relationship with other beings across society. To conclude my role as an apologist for Plato’s inauthentic representation of Thoth, the exchange between Phaedrus and Socrates illustrates that Plato knew the limits of his own knowledge about Egypt, but quite directly explained his portrayal itself was to rhetorically convey a protreptic argument through myth.

In the next chapter, I explore how Plato further developed the theory of rhetorical myth, with another clear signal to Egyptian rhetorical traditions, in his most renowned and enduring mythmaking skema.⁵ Plato’s summative comment on the role of rhetoric in society would be stated with a similar nod to Egypt and a myth of his own in Timaeus-Critias, the subject of the next chapter.