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PLATO’S MOTLEY: DECEPTION IN THE STATESMAN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2025

Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle
Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle*
Affiliation:
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, Canada
*
mor.boyle@alum.utoronto.ca
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Abstract

This article investigates the curious motley in Plato’s Statesman (291a–b) as a chorus of predators that threaten the statesman’s singular identity to govern. It identifies those quasi animals and hybrids – lions, centaurs, satyrs, and – for the first time scientifically – octopuses. It also unmasks them by literary criticism and linguistic scholarship as guises of Odysseus, the wily arch-deceiver of the Homeric epics. It discovers their choral leader as the ‘supreme wizard’, the Archon Basileus, the king-priest by lot who supervised the Athenian religious festivals and personally appointed Plato a chorus master. By casting the Archon Basileus as a ‘magician’ amid the seers and priests, Plato assesses his traditional role as deceiving the populace. The motley and its leader embody Plato’s distinction between mere appearances and the defined reality of the statesman. The article concludes that the motley was Plato’s clever ploy to unmask sophists by sophistry.

Keywords

PlatoStatesmandeceptionzoologylion-centaur-satyr-octopussophistryOdysseusArchon Basileuswizard

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Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , October 2025 , pp. 224 - 250
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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References

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4 This corrects previous translations, which have not recognized the animals then popularly called ‘the softies’, i.e., octopuses, which characteristically camouflage. See below, 233–235.

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