Classics Colloquium

Plato is often invoked for his critique of practices deemed “magical.” However, his polemics obscure as much as they unveil, as his dialogues are also infused with reflection about divinity and the uncanny, and appeals to inspiration and enchantment. These facets of Plato’s writings have been profitably studied in relation to early Greek ideas about the power of the spoken word. This approach nevertheless risks abstracting elite writers such as Plato from their social context and their lived realities of religious experience. In this talk, I adopt a different method. There is an abundance of material evidence for everyday religious and “magical” practice in fourth-century Athens that can help us more concretely contextualize Plato in his world. Approaching Plato from the vantage point of the archaeological remains of ancient Greek “private” ritual practices such as curses, spells, and incantations, I suggest that the “magical” in Plato’s dialogues should not merely be viewed as a metaphor for the power of logos or philosophical inquiry, but rather, that it was also a reality of everyday experience in Plato’s Athens that the philosopher both diagnosed and sought to transform.